A male leopard died of electrocution when it climbed up a 12-foot electric pole at Mallaram village of Nizamabad district recently.
The villagers on their way to the fields early in the morning were shocked to find the limp body of the animal hanging from the top of the electric pole. They immediately alerted the local forest officials, who then brought the body down before sending it to the Nizamabad veterinary hospital for an autopsy. The post mortem report revealed that the leopard died from electrocution.
Nizamabad Divisional Forest Officer VSLV Prasad said that it was surprising how the animal managed to get to the top of the pole as there were no trees around.
“Leopards are capable of climbing up the long trees, and so, this leopard also might have climbed the pole like any other tree,” he said, adding that once atop, the leopard likely came in contact with high tension wires, resulting in its electrocution.
It seems that the leopard entered the area from the neighbouring forest which is just half a kilometre away.
Prasad said that leopards normally enter villages from surrounding forest areas in search of prey like cattle and sheep. However, there were no complaints about wild cats entering the village in the recent past.
The initial suspicion was that the animal’s death may have been caused by poachers however, forest officials later ruled it out.
“It was five-year-old male leopard weighing nearly 80 kgs. It is virtually impossible for poachers to dump the body on the top of a 12-ft electric pole. Moreover, the poachers generally dump the body of the wild animals after skinning it and removing its nails and teeth. But here, nothing of that sort happened,” Prasad said.
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