Yet another horrific incident has been reported from Kerala of brutal treatment towards animals. The state was recently in news for the death of a female elephant which died after consuming fruits stuffed with crackers. Now, the brutality is committed on a leopard.
Five villagers, who killed a six-year-old full-grown leopard and feasted on its meat at Mankulam in Idukki, have landed in the forest department’s net after they tried to go one step further and sell the meat. The accused were purportedly vexed with the big cat, which used to stray into their farmland and kill their cattle. The incident occurred on Wednesday.
“The leopard had recently killed a goat owned by Vinod P K — the key accused. So, Vinod and his friends laid a snare made of the brake cable of a motorbike to trap the big cat. The snare seems to have tightened around the animal’s neck as it tried to escape,” said Mankulam Range Forest Officer V B Udayasooryan.
V C Kuriakose, Salimon, Binu and Vincent Poulose are the other arrested accused.
Two of them are cooks at a local toddy shop and one is a trader. They have been charged under various sections of the Wildlife Protection Act and could attract a jail term of three to seven years, said Beat Forest Officer Jomon. The accused, after killing the big cat, had carved out around 10kg of meat from its carcass. They also took its skin, teeth and nails, and threw what remained of the animal into the river.
Forest officials got news of the incident after two days, on Friday, after the accused went around the village trying to sell the meat. The officers soon raided Vinod’s house, where they found the leopard’s skin, teeth and nails, and cooked meat. “I’ve never come across such an incident before. Recently, a video of a person claiming he killed a tiger and consumed its meat was circulating on social media. They may have got the idea from such videos,” said Divisional Forest Officer P J Shuhaib.
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