Faint growl alerts farmer, leopard cub in borewell for 2 days rescued

Ghaziabad: A 4-month-old leopard cub trapped in a borewell for two days was rescued in Garh village on Thursday.The animal, which officials said was healthy, has been kept in the forest range office and is being fed milk. Yashpal of Garhmukteshwar was visiting his farmland on his way back from an Independence Day programme when a growl attracted his attention.“We dug this borewell to irrigate our fields. I was inspecting the crops when I heard a tired growl. I peered into the borewell, and realised that an animal was trapped inside. Since it was dark and the borewell 10-12ft deep, I couldn’t see clearly. But as I looked hard, I was shocked to realise it was actually a leopard cub,” Yashpal said.The farmer’s first instinct was to run away as the cub’s mother could be hiding nearby. “But I chose to wait and look around. I thought if I ran away, the poor animal could die. So, I called other villagers, who informed the forest department,” he added.Yashpal said leopard sightings were quite common in the area, but seeing cubs alone was unusual. Gaurav Kumar, a forest guard who rescued the cub, said the animal was exhausted. “It was in a poor state and caked in mud. When we switched on the torch, we found scratch marks on the walls of the borewell, suggesting that the cub might have tried hard to climb up. It looked dehydrated. We couldn’t have wasted even a minute,” he added.Gaurav carefully scaled down the pit with the help of a rope. “I agree it was a cub, but still a leopard. I wore gloves and put on an extra layer of clothes to shield myself from attacks. But when I had descended near it, the cub charged at me — its claws and canines would have been 1 to 1.5 inches long. I handled it carefully, and threw the net over it,” he said.Forest officials are deliberating over the next course of action.According to norms, if a rescued animal is healthy, it is released into the wild. But for the cub, which is only four months old and without a mother, the wild could be fraught with dangers.“If an animal is injured, it is shifted to a zoo after its condition stabilises. In UP, there are zoos with medical facilities in Etawah, Gorakhpur, Lucknow, and Kanpur. Once the cub is a little healthier, we will seek an order from the chief wildlife warden. In this case, I think the cub will have to be shifted to one of these zoos,” said a forest official.