Tirumala: 5th elusive leopard caught on Tirumala

Tirumala : The number of trapped leopards in Tirumala has gone up to five with the capture of one more animal on Thursday.

‘Operation Leopards’ was launched about three weeks back when a boy who was attacked and injured and a few days later a six-year-old girl was fatally attacked as she was walking towards the Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy temple. Following these incidents, the Forest department had installed over 300 cameras to detect the leopards about three weeks back and so far they had succeeded in tracing and caging five leopards.

While the DNA report of these leopards to establish which one attacked the 6-year-old girl is yet to come, the big question that is being raised in political circles, including the BJP and Jana Sena, is do these cameras identify only big cats like leopards or can they identify the movement of human beings too.

If they are powerful enough and capable of identifying any moving object, then how is it that they are not able to identify any movement of the red sander smugglers? They feel that this mystery needs to be resolved.

They claim that the camera is automatically triggered by a change in some activity in its vicinity, like presence of an animal or a human being. It is typically equipped with a motion sensor – usually a passive infrared (PIR) sensor or an active infrared (AIR) sensor using an infrared light beam. So, the question that is being raised now is can these cameras be used to monitor the movement of red sander smugglers and trap them? If so, why are the authorities silent about any human movement.

Few weeks back, the Opposition also alleged that the big cats were being caged with motive of making forests leopard free. They said instead of taking steps to ensure that they do not come out of dense forests, the leopards were being caged and sent to SV Zoo Park down the hills.

Of the five captured so far, only one has been let off back in the dense forests while four others are still in the zoo in the name of quarantine.

The first leopard was caught on June 24, three in August between 14 and 27 and the latest one was on Thursday. Forest officials maintain that they will be kept in zoo till they ascertain which one was the killer leopard.

TTD and forest officials said the trap cameras revealed two more leopards - one moving at the forest fringe in special type cottages in Tirumala and another in the Narasimha Swamy temple forest area near Alipiri footpath.