17-year-old mauled by leopard in Uttarakhand’s Tehri

New Tehri, Jul 19 (PTI) A 17-year-old boy has been mauled by a leopard in Uttarakhand’s Tehri district, officials said on Friday.

The incident took place in Devprayag on Thursday night when Anurag, a class 12 student, was returning home after playing cricket and was attacked by the leopard, Kirtinagar Sub-Divisional Magistrate Sonia Pant said.

Despite some local people raising an alarm, the leopard did not leave the boy, the officials said.

According to the officials, police and forest department personnel reached the spot after receiving the information of the incident.

The victim’s mutilated body was recovered late Thursday night, Pant said.

BJP MLA from Devprayag Vinod Kandari, who reached the spot on Friday, directed the forest department to capture the leopard immediately.

By 6 am, a team of the forest department successfully trapped the leopard in a cage, the officials said.

However, the angry locals created a ruckus, demanding that the leopard be shot on the spot, they said.

The forest department officials told them that the captured leopard would be taken only to the office in the tehsil, to which they agreed.

Upon reaching the tehsil, when the local people discovered that the leopard was being transported to Dehradun via Hindolakhal, they threw out the employees of the ranger office and staged a sit-in, locking the place, the officials said.

Divisional Forest Officer Jeevan Dagade calmed the people down and appealed to them to not let their children go out of homes alone in the evening.