Five days after a child died in a leopard attack in an agricultural field in Amreli district, another child died in the same manner in the district on Saturday evening. One-year-10-month-old Manav Parmar was in the front yard of his house at 8:30 pm on Saturday when a leopard suddenly came out of the darkness and attacked the child, the family said. His father Govinda Parma is a Maldhari (shepherd).
This is the third incident in a week in Amreli where children have been attacked.
The latest incident happened on Saturday late at night when the child was sleeping with family members in a hut in Kattar village in the forest area of Rajula range.
The leopard grabbed the boy by his neck and dragged him to a nearby bush. When the child’s family members raised an alarm, the cat dumped the boy and fled, the officer said.
The child, who suffered serious neck injuries, was rushed to a government hospital in nearby Mahua town where doctors declared him brought dead, he said.
The forest department has set up cages in the area to catch the man-eating leopard and keep it away from human settlements, the official said.