The chances of tigers and humans running into one another at close quarters are higher in Pilibhit than just about any other tiger reserve in India.?
The reserve has suffered from a chronic human-wildlife conflict and recent incidents hold testimony to this fact.?
According to reports, in school children at a government school in Keeratpur village were left terrified after a leopard entered the campus from?an adjacent field and attacked a dog.??
The leopard killed the dog and dragged the carcass to the fields near the Barahi forest range of the Pilibhit Tiger Reserve (PTR) on Wednesday.?The petrified children ran into their classrooms and locked themselves in.
According to IANS, the principal Nidhi Diwakar arrived at the school, the children told her about the incident and she immediately alerted the forest department.
A field forest team, led by forest inspector Ajmer Yadav, visited the spot and took photographs of pugmarks.
PTR deputy director Naveen Khandelwal said that from the pug marks, it was evident that the leopard was an adult.?He said that he had directed the Barahi range officer to deploy a picket of armed forest personnel at the school from Thursday for the safety of the students and to monitor the movement of the leopard.
He said that the leopard would hopefully retreat to the forest in a day or two.
Meanwhile, the children continued with their classes with no security around. The village head Ranjit Singh, meanwhile, has asked villagers to accompany their children to the school in groups.
In recent years, tigers have repeatedly entered Pilibhit¡¯s farmlands and homes and have then been captured by authorities. Last year an armed crowd gathered and bludgeoned a tigress with sticks and spears after it strayed into human habitation.?
Since then authorities have mulled over constructing fences in the tiger reserve but little has been done. Apart from the leopard straying into the school, a partially eaten body of a 65-year-old villager in?the Mala range of Pilibhit Tiger Reserve (PTR) was found earlier this February.?
?The deceased, identified as Phool Chand of Baijunagar village under Gajraula police station, had gone missing after he went to his sugarcane field on Friday afternoon. Field forest force and police have recovered the body around 400 meters deep into the core forest area.??
Makhan Lal, deceased's son, alleged that the tigress along with its cubs had been moving about in the agricultural area, adjoining Garha forest beat for a couple of months but the forest officials had not taken any action in the matter.
He claimed that his father's body was killed by the tigress and dragged into the jungle, where it was eaten.??