Leopard sighted on R&DE campus of DRDO facility in Pune, search operation underway

On Tuesday, around 3 am, a leopard was spotted on the premises of a facility of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in the Dighi area in Pune, Maharashtra. The leopard was sighted on the campus of Research and Development Establishment, Engineers (R&DE), a critical facility of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) on Alandi Road in Pune.

Patrolling has been intensified in the area and camera traps have been set up to locate it, a press release said. Videos of the big cat went viral on social media.

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PM Kurulkar, Director of R&DE, said, "After sighting the leopard, we put in place adequate movement precautions. There were important meetings scheduled on Tuesday that were conducted in other buildings located at a safer distance. We are coordinating with the Forest Department teams. We have deployed drones for the search operation with cameras from the forest department."

Forest officials revealed that because the compound wall is being reconstructed and is temporarily secured with tin sheets, the leopard must have entered through gaps in these tin sheets. 

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Range Forest Officer Mukesh Sanas said, “We initiated the search with the help of pugmarks. We are installing at least 20 camera traps in and around the campus. The search operation will continue till the leopard is located or we definitively confirm that it has returned to the forest area.”

In similar cases, in August last year, a leopard was spotted near the Training Battalion-II of the Bombay Engineering Group and Centre of the Indian Army in the Dighi area. Earlier in 2022, another leopard had strayed into the Mercedes Benz plant in Chakan, Pune. The animal was rescued later.