On wee hours of 20 February 2019 , a adult leopard was spotted in the Korum Mall - The Official Page parking lot. Soon after spotting the big cat security personnel over there informed this to Police and Forest department. Soon officials from both the department reached the spot for further examination.
We also got a call from forest department to assist them in the search and rescue operation. Firstly, Search was done inside the mall premises but we were not able to trace the leopard. After that cctv footages from parking lot were checked and in that leopard was seen jumping over the compound and left towards Satkar Residency Hotel at 5.30 am.
From the rear side of the Hotel leopard managed to enter into basement and took shelter into a room. Leopard rescue team from SGNP arrived at the spot. The area was immediately cordoned.
After discussing and having our stratergies and plan of action , we divided into two teams covering both the places from where we can locate , aim and dart big cat.
After an hour we located the big cat and then managed to direct animal to our team one with the help of some mild firecrackers. After that it was tranquilized by Dr. Shailesh Pethe .
It was safely removed and sent to SGNP leopard rescue centre for further examination.
This entire operation lasted 5 hours. This entire operation was done under the guidance of DCF Jitendra Ramgaonkar and assisted by ACF Girija Desai and executed by Leopard rescue team of SGNP. RFO Sanjay Waghmode , RFO Rajendra Pawar from Yeoor , RFO Deshmukh from Thane were also present at the spot. Forester Manoj Pardeshi , forest guards Ravindra Thawar , Santosh bhange and other assisted in the entire process.
Pawan Sharma , Honorary wildlife warden thane , Nitesh Pancholi and Chandrakant Kangralkar from track ngo and our volunteer Aniket Kadam , Omkar Kolekar and Rohit Mohite helped Forest department to track the leopard and crowd control.
Various goverment agencies like Police Department, fire brigade and Disaster Management force were also present on the location.
Mr. Eknath Shinde - à¤à¤•à¤¨à¤¾à¤¥ संà¤à¤¾à¤œà¥€ शिंदे , Guardian minister of Thane and Mr Pratap Sarnaik were also present and monitored entire operation.
PS : The most difficult part of the operation was to control the photographers and media personnel who were not listening to officials over there. There priority was to get clear shot of leopard rather than thinking about the animal in distress. They even started arguing with the staff and got physically involved. We are attaching one video here from that you can colnclude how difficult it was.
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