A video, showing a lion casually walking on a flyover in Gujarat’s Junagadh amid heavy rainfall, has gone viral on social media. The big cat can be seen calmly walking down the road as commuters pass by. Some vehicles even stop midway to take pictures of the ‘king of the beasts’.
“Gujarat is battered with incessant rains with flood like situation in many cities. Even, King of the Jungle is forced to relocate from it’s habitat," former cricketer Syed Saba Karim wrote on Twitter, while posting the video of the lion.
Gujarat is battered with incessant rains with flood like situation in many cities. Even, King of the Jungle is forced to relocate from it's habitat. Pray to God 🙏 for a speedy recovery and normalisation of the cities affected#GujaratRain #GujaratRains pic.twitter.com/5YORSAJnEN— Syed Saba Karim (@SyedSabaKarim5) July 23, 2023
Reacting to the clip, a netizen tagged Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan and reminded him of his 2011-12 Gujarat tourism ad. “…He heard you sir , kabhi to aao Gujarat mein, kuch din to gujaro Gujarat mein," the Twitter user said. Some were inquisitive to know if the former cricketer had shot the video himself.
In other news, a three-year-old Asiatic lion that was hit by a goods train in Amreli district last week, succumbed to injuries.
The incident took place near Uchaiya village of Rajula taluka around 2:05 am on Friday, shortly after the forest staff spotted a pride of two lions and two lionesses close to the railway track that connects Pipavav Port with Rajula town.
A forest official said the train could not stop in time as it was too close to the lions when the loco pilot applied emergency brakes. One of the lions died on the spot on Friday, while the second one passed away late on Sunday.
“While our staff managed to save two lionesses by driving them to the other side of the track in time, another male lion was injured after being hit by the train. It was then referred to Sakkarbaug Zoo in Junagadh for treatment," the range forest officer (RFO) of Rajula had said after the accident.
Notably, the state forest department had erected fences along the track at regular intervals to save the lions from being hit by trains. However, the fence as well as several watchtowers along the track were badly damaged due to cyclone Tauktae in 2021, said Rajula RFO Yograj Singh Rathod.
After the damage, a lion cub was killed after being struck by a passenger train on the same railway track in Amreli district. The Gujarat government, during a session in the Legislative Assembly in 2022, revealed that 283 lions, lionesses, and lion cubs died within a two-year from December 2021. Of these, 29 fatalities were attributed to unnatural causes.
Despite being a revenue area, which falls under Shetrunji forest division, lions have made Rajula area their home for a long time and many a time they cross the railway track, said Rathod.
“The repair work has already been initiated and seven watchtowers, to keep an eye on lions near the tracks, were reinstalled. We have deployed Railway Sevaks to alert the loco pilots and help lions in crossing the track. Last year, we helped 106 lions to cross the tracks safely on 36 different occasions,” the RFO added.
According to the the 2022 population estimates, there were a total of 674 Asiatic lions residing in and around the Gir Wildlife Sanctuary.
(With inputs from PTI)