Pune: 2 women among 3 injured in separate leopard attacks

Deputy Conservator of Forest of the Junnar Division, Amol Satpute, confirmed the incidents. “Officials from the respective forest ranges responded to the situation immediately. The teams are on the field assessing the situation,” said Satpute. Forest rangers have stepped up vigil in these areas and have advised caution to the people living in the surrounding areas, said officials.

As per information by officials from the Junnar Division in Pune district, the two women were attacked in Retwadi village of Khed taluka. The two places of attack are located around one-and-half-kilometre away from each other.

The injured women have been identified as Aruna Sanjay Bhalekar (50) and Rizwana Abdul Pathan (35), both residents of Retwadi. Range Forest Officer Pradeep Raundhal said that Bhalekar has sustained severe injuries. “Her condition is critical and she is being treated at Sassoon General Hospital in Pune,” he said. Officials said that they are not sure if the same leopard had attacked both Bhalekar and Pathan, considering the high population of leopards in the area.

In another incident at Thorandale village in Ambegaon Taluka in the early hours of Wednesday, 17-year-old Onkar Temgire, who had gone to the fields to release the water for the crops, was attacked by a leopard. Temgire sustained an injury on the face and is receiving treatment.

In September last year, a 60-year-old woman had died in an attack by a leopard in an orchard in the Vadgaon Patole village of the Khed Taluka. Earlier this year, in the third week of March, a leopard had ventured into the campus of Mercedes-Benz India in Pune district’s Chakan early on Monday morning and was rescued before noon by the forest department and wildlife rescue experts with the help of the local police. Various areas under the Junnar Forest Division have seen multiple incidents of human-leopard conflict over the last 20 years.