Man jumps into lion’s cage in Kerala, rescued

In a bizarre incident, a 33-year-old man jumped into the lion’s enclosure at the zoo in Thiruvananthapuram on Wednesday morning but was rescued by the guards in the nick of time before the lioness kept in the enclosure could pounce on him.

It was a chilling drama for the visitors at the Thiruvananthapuram zoo at about 11.15 AM when Murugan from Ottapalam in Palakkad district scaled the barricaded wall of the lion’s enclosure there, jumped inside and crawled towards the lone lioness in the enclosure.

Panic-stricken visitors alerted the guards who jumped inside and rescued him before the lioness got provoked. The zoo guards later handed Murugan, who had been missing from his home for the past few days, over to the police who took him to the hospital. He reportedly told the guards that he jumped into the closure to have a chat with the lion.

A video recorded by a visitor showed Murugan crawling – probably because he suffered an injury in the leg while jumping inside – through the enclosure to the lone lioness, two-year-old Gracy. When the guards yelled at him to get out, he paid no heed. The police suspected that he had some kind of mental disorder.

The alert guards – over a dozen of them – jumped inside the enclosure and dragged him out before the lioness could pounce on him but the drama lasted nearly 20 chilling minutes. Guards said lioness Gracy, born and “brought up” at the zoo itself, had always been a gentle animal.

“The enclosure has another lion, Ayush, a male. We had removed him into a cage while cleaning the enclosure in the morning. Ayush is as not gentle like Gracy. If he was there in the enclosure when the man had jumped in, the story might have been entirely different. Nobody could have entered the enclosure if he was there,” Rajesh, supervisor of the zoo, told the media.

Murugan of Thonippadath house at Palappuram, Ottapalam had reportedly gone missing since February 18 and his family had put out an advertisement in the local newspapers about this. They had also lodged a complaint with the police. The police said they had informed Murugan’s relatives and that a case could be registered after questioning him.

According to zoo employ Arshad, he has never seen Gracy in a bad mood when visitors are around. “She is not an aggressive animal, probably because she has seen people flocking around her enclosure since her birth. Also, she is not easily provoked. However, it was very dangerous for him to move close to her,” he said.

“Actually, we did not give time for Gracy to come near him. We always take care to ensure that visitors here don’t get hurt,” said another employee. However, he pointed out that the situation could have been totally different if the male lion, Ayush, had been released into the enclosure after the morning’s cleaning works.