4-yr-old killed in suspected leopard attack in Nilgiris

COIMBATORE: A four-year-old girl was mauled to death in a suspected leopard attack in The Nilgiris district on Wednesday.

Forest Department officials said that the victim N Saritha, daughter of a migrant couple from Assam, had gone out to relieve herself along with two other children at a private tea estate in Arakadu near Mynala, when the carnivore emerged from a bush and pounced on her.

The animal is believed to have dragged the girl into the bush by the neck. Other workers, who were plucking tea leaves, heard her screams and scared away the animal but couldn’t sight the animal properly. The girl was immediately rushed to Ooty Government Hospital, but could not be saved. The victim’s parents, Nishanth and his wife are daily wagers at the tea estate. A team from the Forest Department arrived and confirmed the presence of a leopard through the pug marks.

“The girl had gone a little away from the estate area, when she came under an accidental. Monitoring in the tea estate and its surrounding areas has been intensified. The nearby reserve forest is barely 2 kms from the spot where the attack took place and has a sizeable leopard population. However, the villagers haven’t had any such untoward incidents so far,” said a senior official of the Forest Department.