Leopard on the loose! Frantic hunt in Indore zoo for missing cat

INDORE: Of all the things one could lose, a leopard is the last to expect. But the Indore zoo authorities or forest staff have done just that, and now there's an injured wild cat, lurking somewhere in the 200km stretch from Burhanpur to Kamla Nehru Zoo, or maybe in the city itself.
The authorities are frantically looking for it but don't even have a guesstimate of where the leopard could be.There are some prominent residential localities near the zoo.
The seven-month-old was rescued in Burhanpur and brought in the same cage to the zoo on Wednesday night, where the vehicle was parked in the open along with the cage and the leopard. A quilt was draped on the cage to help it beat the chill. When officials went to check on it on Thursday morning, it was gone. Panic ensued.
The zoo authorities kept the matter under the rugs for almost 12 hours. Though they cleared the 700-odd visitors out and launched an all-out search with sniffer dogs, no one outside had a clue.

But if a leopard could break out, so could the news. When word finally got out in the evening, zoo officials started blaming forest department officials, claiming they hadn't been informed after the vehicle carrying the leopard was parked in the zoo.
It is not known if the leopard fled from the zoo or somewhere along the way. Four groups, each comprising 10-20 officials and staff, are looking for it. Officials found a hole in the cage, and suspect the leopard wriggled out through it. "Since the leopard is young and small in size, it may have managed to escape from the hole," said some officials.
The leopard has injuries on both its hind legs and had been brought to the zoo for treatment. It was rescued from a house in Dhalmohe village.

Zoo in-charge Uttam Yadav said the leopard seems to have strayed near the river. "We did not get any intimation from the forest team that brought it to the zoo," he said, adding that it appears the leopard fled before the vehicle reached the zoo. "It wasn't spotted even once during our day-long search on the zoo premises," he said.
Forest officials, however, say zoo employees were contacted by the team ferrying the leopard. "Our team had spoken with a zoo official, who told them park the vehicle near the canteen area under CCTV surveillance," Indore's divisional forest officer Narendra Pandwa told TOI.
"The zoo officials were supposed to take care of the leopard. Their surveillance cameras were not working," he added. TNN