The reality of human-animal conflict in urban spaces hit home on Wednesday morning when a leopard was spotted at Korum Mall in Thane.
What followed was a carefully co-ordinated operation involving 50 staffers from the Forest department, 40 policemen from Thane and 20 members from various NGOs to safely tranquillize the big cat and take it to its home. The mall is located just off the Eastern Express Highway.
The six-year-old leopard was first spotted by the mall's security staff at 5:30 am in the mall's parking area. When it was spotted again on the CCTV camera at 5:56 am, an alarm was sounded on the wireless warning all security personnel from entering the parking area.
Soon, the rescue team rushed to the neighbouring location and planned out the daring operation. "It's a huge mall that's open from all sides, so locating the leopard was the biggest challenge," says a senior forest officer. "On top of this, we were worried about it coming on to the streets."
As the combing operation was underway, the leopard was spotted in the basement of Satkar Residency Hotel, right behind the mall, on Pokhran Road.
Half the number of forest officers were immediately dispatched to the hotel, says Dr Jitendra Ramgaonkar, Deputy Conservator of Forest (DCF) (Thane Territorial). "The leopard was spotted at the hotel at about 8 am, and officers from Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) as well as Thane began the operation. The biggest boon was that a security staffer showed the presence of mind and locked the door to the basement, trapping the wild cat," informed Ramgaonkar.
Next came the challenge of darting it safely, said Dr Shailesh Pethe, a veterinary officer from SGNP. "A small section of the wall was broken on one side which became our perch," he said. "But since the basement is shaped like a large 'L', the leopard kept running out of sight. We positioned a team on the other end to burst crackers to scare him towards the darter. This worked and we were able to dart him from a distance of 50 metres."
A detailed medical check-up followed at SGNP, which concluded that the leopard had no injuries and was fit to be released into the wild.
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