Mail Today has seen this video and two similar ones that show a leopard eating the goat. All three videos had been shot from the same angle and show two similar trees to which the goat was tied.
Villagers said the Aravalli Hills area of Gurgaon boasts about 35-40 leopards, but the rise in the number of dead big cats is worrying them.
They are hinting at a possible poaching racket in the area, though there is no tangible evidence to back the claim.
Rajesh Wats, the R.W.A. president of Aravali Retreat, also confirmed that there were rumours doing the rounds about poaching.
“We have also received complaints from villagers about a goat tied to a tree to lure big cats in one of the farmhouses here.
"As the matter was serious, we lodged a complaint with the wildlife department to investigate it,” Wats said.
The villagers also showed this correspondent photographs of two dead leopards that they claimed were found in January this year.
This takes the total number of dead leopards to seven within the last one year, a number that has raised many eyebrows.
In November last year, the Gurgaon forest department officials found a dead 12-year-old leopard in Sehrawan village on NH-8 near Manesar.
The big cat had many injuries on its body, including multiple injuries to the head and spine.
Though the officials said the cat was probably hit by a heavy vehicle and died due to the injuries sustained, wildlife activists believed there was more to it than that.
That was the fifth leopard found dead last year. Earlier in April 2014, another leopard was found dead under mysterious circumstances in ITC Classic Golf Course.
During the investigation, wildlife department officials had stumbled upon three more leopard carcasses.
However, Kanwar Pal, Inspector of Wildlife (Sohna range), dismissed the poaching angle but confirmed that the department had received a complaint about goats being used as prey to hunt leopards.
“We have been investigating the matter as per the video grab available with us….we are also trying to locate the farmhouse identified by Mail Today,” he said.
“Such an incident is very serious. We are definitely concerned about it and will look into it,” assured Conservator of Forests (South Circle) M.D. Sinha.
Rukumudin, a caretaker of a local farmhouse, said: “We have seen the two dead leopards. The wildlife department officials took the bodies for post-mortem examination.”
The villagers are claiming that the case of two leopards found dead in January could be linked to the farmhouse incident because the leopards were reportedly found in the vicinity of the farmhouse.
“The farmhouse owner probably put poison in the goat after it was hunted down by the big cat. A leopard eats its prey over a few days, so the leopard died after eating the poisoned goat.
"This could mean there is some illegal trade going on,” said a villager on condition of anonymity.
Divisional forest officer (Gurgaon range) K.S. Khetkar said: “Dying leopards in this area is a very serious matter; officials have been given strict instructions to closely monitor any kind of development in this regard.”
'Declare Aravallis as forest area', say environmentalists
Even though the Aravalli range is known for its rich biodiversity, the recent killing of a leopard near a farmhouse in Gurgaon exposes the failure of the Haryana government and the Ministry of Environment to notify the entire region as a forest area.
Despite calls from environmentalists and several locals to declare areas that fall under the Aravalli range as forest areas, the Haryana government is reluctant to do so.
Declaration of the entire Aravalli range as a forest area would bring it under the ambit of the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, which completely prohibits all non-forest activities inside the forest area without the prior approval from the Centre.
Largescale tree-felling, clearing of vegetation and construction works are taking place across the range.
“Despite the Supreme Court’s directions in the Lafarge and Godavarman case to identify and declare such areas as forests, the Haryana government and the Centre have failed to notify it,” said environmental lawyer Rahul Choudhary.
“We have long been asking the governments for stringent conservation measures but hardly anything has been done,” said Tito Joseph, Program Manager, Wildlife Protection Society of India.
“The Aravalli forests have a lot of human presence and given the umpteen pressures from illegal mining, logging and fragmentation of habitats, it is not surprising if leopards come in conflict with humans.
"Fear of a large predator in the absence of wildlife awareness could be a reason people take drastic action,” said Koustubh Sharma, Indian Regional Ecologist for the Snow Leopard Trust.
“The leopards want to avoid humans as much as humans want to stay away from them.”
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