The maneater of Wardha

Hunting a maneater has been part of life in Vidarbha’s man-animal conflict zone of Chandrapur and the bordering forested areas of Bhandara,Wardha and Nagpur for the past five years. The area is part of the larger wildlife buffer of Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve,now seen as one of the biggest man-animal conflict zones in the world. But this time,the situation is alarming. A big fear struck the area in 2007 when a tiger had killed four and injured a few in a month in Chandrapur. The animal was shot dead. In 2008,the count,24,was the highest. Past two years saw the conflict going down a bit. But this year it seems to be going up again—15 human killings have been reported till October.

Date: October 30. Time: 4.30 p.m.

About 15 km away from Girad village in Wardha district,30 guards and officers of Maharashtra’s forest department descend on a nullah,chasing pugmarks of a leopard. They quickly lower a cage from a truck. While some position the cage,others hastily camouflage it with shrubs and branches. The trap must be in place before 6 p.m. when the animal might come out after a siesta. A restive crowd of villagers watches them,talking in hushed tones,their panic spiked with anger. The leopard has killed five villagers and mauled three in less than 10 days.

On November 1,another team of forest officials had captured a leopard at Bembala-Rith in nearby Chandrapur district but the search is on at Girad in Wardha district—just to be doubly sure that the maneater is not on the prowl.

When the cage is in place,there are frantic calls for goats. “Get them here soon,we are late,” hollers Assistant Conservator of Forests (ACF) Kishore Mishrikotkar. “Get the truck out of here,” D P Dahat,another ACF,shouts one last time,repeated directions having fallen on deaf ears. The driver rushes and whirrs the truck out.

The officials look around for careless villagers still working in their farms. “We warned them they must return early for a few days. But many don’t listen and then blame us if something goes wrong,” says Dahat.

“Why not get a stray dog as bait,” suggests an official. “Leopards simply love dogs.”

“Animal activists love them too. So,no question of getting a dog,” says Dahat. “Neither the goat nor the dog is going to die,but activists say use the goat,not the dog. Sounds rational?” asks the official.

A man walks in with a goat thrown around his neck,soon followed by another goat-carrying man. “One will be inside the cage and the other out in the open. If the leopard skips the cage,it will eat the goat outside. This will minimise the risk of attack on a human being,” says Mishrikotkar.

A little away,village youth are venting their anger at the forest officials. “They are so silly. The leopard has taken a liking for human blood. It doesn’t even look at the cattle now. And they are putting the goat in. Instead,one of them should be made to sit there as bait,” says a curly-haired man,fiddling with his moustache.

Men from the forest department are on their toes. They try to herd the villagers away from the trap with the help of a lone policeman. “See how the police are conspicuously absent. They know how sensitive the situation has become. Yet,they haven’t bothered to send more men. If the villagers do something to our men,who will be responsible?” says a forest official.

The villagers are cleared from the area,yet four more people appear from the nullah just as darkness starts enveloping the place. One of them is a kid. “That’s tempting for the leopard. If the leopard is lurking around,he might lunge at the child,” says Mishrikotkar. After some time,a lone old man walks out along with his cattle. “Don’t you know there is a man-eating leopard here?” the men shout at him.

Next day,the forest department team discovers luck is not on its side—the cage is empty.

From Girad,the forest department teams fan out at 5 a.m. to Khek,Chafapur,Chikhli and Khapri villages. ACFs Dahat,PK Gadbail,L V Swami and Vijay Khedkar supervise the patrolling and search teams,while Deepak Khade leads the tranquilisation team.

“Since there is standing crop in the fields,we burst crackers to provoke the leopard. The suspect location is the nullah that provides an ideal habitat for the leopard,” says Khedkar. “We generally cover 10-15 kilometres in each round. Some move in the vehicles. By 11 a.m.,some of the teams get back to Girad and set out again after lunch,relieving the other teams.”

As fear plays out in the minds of villagers,false alarms abound. “Any movement in the crop is taken as a sign of the leopard. People come running to us,saying they have spotted the animal. When we rush there,we see nothing. Often we know it’s a false alarm,but we must respect people’s sentiments,” says forester G B Patil,who is leading one of the search teams.

“False alarms divert our attention and help the animal escape. But that’s a a hazard of the operation,” says DFO (Vigilance) DW Pagar,who has come from Nagpur to supervise the operation. “For the first two days (October 30,31),we didn’t sleep. We didn’t have proper meals and survived on anything that we could lay our hands on,” says Khedkar.

After three kills in Chandrapur,the leopard had first killed Baburao Barokar in his field at Khek on October 27 and Sadashiv Warghane in Chafapur on October 29 on Wardha side of the border,setting panic among villagers who say they have never seen a “leopard”.

At Khek,forest men show Pagar the field where the leopard killed Barokar. “He had just finished his work and was his changing clothes when the leopard attacked him and later also ate him partially,” says Khedkar. The blood stains at the spot bear testimony to the deadly attack.

After checking the cage in the field,the team leaves for another cage site a few kilometres away. “We put the cage here since it is here that we saw the animal’s pugmarks for the second time on October 31,” says Patil.

At Chafapur,Warghane’s daughter-in-law Chanda and neighbour Ragho Zode narrate how the 65-year-old man was attacked outside their house and dragged into the field. Warghane was warned only 15 minutes earlier by a village youth who said he had just seen the leopard. “Bawaji (old man) told him that the leopard won’t come near the bonfire by which he was sitting,” Chanda said.

The team visits the last cage near the Chandrapur border. Here too the cage is empty. The evening round begins at 4.30 p.m. and continues till midnight. “We now have enough reason to believe that the man-eating leopard is the one captured at Bembala-Rith. But we will continue the search for a few days more to rule out the thinnest of chances,” Swami says.