Leopard mauls retired teacher to death

RAJKOT: Initially suspected and registered as a murder, the death of a 64-year-old man in Gir-Somnath’s Talala taluka, has turned out to be a result of a brutal attack by a leopard.
The body of Laxmidas Sureja, a retired school teacher, was found in a pool of blood on Virpur-Dhava road at around 10:45pm on Monday by his family members. Sureja had gone to his mango orchard with some labourers and was returning home after completion of work. However, as he did not come till late, his relatives started searching for him.
They called the the local police suspecting that someone had killed him and the cops registered a case of murder. The body was sent for postmortem to Talala government hospital where doctors informed at around 2am that the injuries were inflicted by some wild animal. The police then informed the forest department for further investigation.
Sureja was returning home on foot from the orchard.
Talking to TOI, Dheeraj Mittal, deputy conservator of forest, Gir (west) division said, “There was no eyewitness of the incident and being the rainy season, pug marks were also not clearly seen. But looking at injury marks, we strongly suspect that he was attacked by a leopard. It's difficult to say why the leopard attacked him.”
According to forest officials, leopards generally don’t attack adults, so there is a possibility that a wild cat and the victim could have accidentally come closer.