The leopard carcass was found near a small stream. Strangely, just 100 metres away from it, a partially eaten dog was found. While the dog had all its claws and teeth intact, the leopard's teeth and claws were missing, raising suspicion about foul play.
Days seem to be getting more difficult for the leopards of Mumbai. Barely two months after a leopard's body was found entangled in a wire snare in Aarey, another completely decomposed carcass was found around noon on Friday. The corpse had a wire snare stuck in its chest region and all its claws were missing.
Incidentally even in this case, it was a private agency carrying out a tree census inside Aarey and the Filmcity area that first encountered the foul stench, only to locate the carcass around 200 meters away from the set of a Marathi serial. Forest officials from the Thane territorial division said they received a phone call from those carrying out the tree census around 3.30pm, informing them about the dead leopard. The officials reached the site around 5pm.
The leopard carcass was found near a small stream. Strangely, just 100 metres away from it, a partially eaten dog was found. While the dog had all its claws and teeth intact, the leopard's teeth and claws were missing, raising suspicion about foul play.
"The body was completely decomposed. It seemed to be a month old carcass. As of now, we suspect poaching as not only all the leopard's claws from all four limbs were missing but we also found a wire snare stuck to it," said assistant conservator of forest (ACF) Kishore Thakare. He added that since the carcass was so decomposed, it would not be possible to carry out a post-mortem. He further informed that they suspected local involvement and might question people working on the shooting sets nearby.
While the forest department has been routinely blamed for not patrolling the areas effectively and hence not being able to contain poaching, a department official said that they do not have adequate staff and the areas of Aarey and Film city do not come under their jurisdiction. "These are huge areas and we have limited staff sanctioned for our jurisdiction. We would like to meet the officials from the Film city and the Aarey colony and ask them to intensify their security checks," said another forest official.
Leopards are known to roam freely across Aarey as well as Film city. In fact, a team studying leopards of Aarey Colony for the Thane forest department used camera traps and found nine leopards in Aarey. The same team, in mid-February, found two wire snares, removed them and alerted the forest department about chances of poachers operating to trap anything from smaller animals such as wild hare, jungle cat, wild boar and mongoose to bigger ones such as a leopard.
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