Leopard enters Bengaluru school, trapped after injuring five

A male leopard was on Sunday tranquilized and trapped after it quietly entered a private school in the city and injured five people, a wildlife official said.

"We bolted the room in which the leopard was hiding and tranquilized it with one shot through the mesh and ferried in a cage to the Bannerghatta zoo," Karnataka chief wildlife warden Ravi Ralph told IANS here.

"We got a call from Vibgyor Public School in the evening that a leopard had jumped over the compound wall and was seen on CCTV cameras passing through an empty classroom and entering a room with a mesh cover," Ralph said.

As the school was closed on Sunday, barring a couple of security guards, hundreds of students and faculty were lucky to have escaped a ferocious attack by the eight-year-old leopard.

"The leopard seems to have strayed into the city late Saturday from a nearby forest area in search of prey and jumped into the school premises over a compound wall," Ralph, who rushed to the spot for rescuing it, pointed out.

"We will identify its pug marks in and around the city's eastern areas to find out from where it entered the city unnoticed and without harming to anyone," Ralph asserted.

Of the five persons injured in the rescue operation, a wildlife activist Sanjay Gubbi, was hurt grievously.

"We will hold a inquiry into the strange incident and take more measures to prevent man-animal conflict, as leopards adapt to human habitats for prey and remain undetected as they camouflage," Ralph added.