It was a shock for villagers, who found the broken cage with the goat, kept as bait for the leopard, lying dead inside, when they came to see if the leopard was trapped. The leopard has left people in villages near Karamadai panicked over the last one month. The animal began its attacking spree by mauling to death two dogs and a goat owned by Vijayakumar, 46, a farmer at his agricultural field on the night of June 10. Since then, the villagers claim that at least 10 dogs and two goats were preyed upon by the leopard.

Alerted by the villagers, the Forest Department fixed two cameras at Bommanaicker ‘thottam’ to monitor the movement of the animal. After the image of the leopard was caught on camera, the department took efforts to trap it by setting up a cage.

A live goat was tied inside the cage as bait. As expected, the leopard, which came in search of easy prey, got trapped in the cage during the night. However after killing the goat, curiously the leopard managed to escape by breaking open the cage.

The Forest Department personnel said the leopard had broken open the wooden plank kept to seal the bottom of the cage and escaped underneath by digging out the mud surface. “The leopard managed to escape by breaking the cage, which was old,” said T Saravanan, Karamadai Forest Range Officer. “Of the two cages set up to trap the animal, one was old. Both cages were put up a little distance away from each other. We have now removed the older one,” he said.

A team of eight Forest Department personnel have been deployed at the spot to carry out round-the-clock monitoring to ensure that the leopard does not harm anyone. The department faced criticism for using a damaged cage to trap a ferocious animal without foreseeing the danger involved.