Leopard spotted In ICRISAT campus

The employees of International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) at Patancheru located in the outskirts of Hyderabad city is frightened, as a leopard was spotted in the campus.

After four days of the hunt to trace the animal, on Sunday night the forest officials spotted the presence. It was really tough to spot the leopard in 1390 hectare campus. The leopard is believed to strayed from the forests of Viakarabad or Parigi crossing the ORR.

Jayashree Balasubramanian, head of communications department, ICRISAT, said: “there was a suspected leopard sighting inside the campus last week by one of our security personnel. So, we immediately informed government officials and they have also responded. We have been taking all possible steps as per their procedure.”

Forest officials took four days to finally spot the leopard, their search run in for looking of the pug marks, analyzing CCTV footage and combing operations etc.

A Shankaran, Senior official of the forest department said our team has spotted the leopard and recorder the video of the animal inside the campus. We are taking measures to safely relocate the animal to a nearby forest.

This is not the first time ICRISAT had such guests, a similar incident happened where 7-year-old leopard wandered in the campus for at least 5 months until forest officials captured and relocated it safely, happened in 2014.