A leopard wounded at least five people on Wednesday when it strayed into a courthouse on the outskirts of India’s capital, police said.
Footage of the incident circulated on social media showed several men injured in the attack, including one man who was carried away from the courthouse in Ghaziabad while watched by onlookers.
NEW – Leopard wounds five in Indian courthouse https://t.co/mZAQ5snCOS pic.twitter.com/RJNegWkhIR
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Body-armour-clad police were waving flaming sticks and laying out nets inside the courthouse in an effort to corral the creature, video seen by AFP showed.
“The leopard jumped around in the court complex in panic and five to six people were injured. Efforts are on to capture it,” an officer in the local police station told AFP, declining to give his name.
Ghaziabad is on the eastern edge of New Delhi and is close to an expanse of forest that is a leopard habitat.
At least 12,000 leopards live in India. They have been classified as a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Officials say that, on average, one leopard is killed per day for straying into areas occupied by humans in India, with the number of incidents on the rise due to shrinking forest habitats.
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