Operation Leopard: 5th big cat captured near Andhra's Narasimhaswamy Temple

Forest officials managed to trap and capture yet another leopard, taking the count to five, near the seventh mile of the Narasimhaswamy Temple in Andhra Pradesh in the early hours of Thursday.

This marks the fifth big cat that has been captured since the beginning of 'Operation Leopard', which began in August and was initiated after several leopards were sighted on the walkway to the hilltop temple.

All the trapped leopards have been shifted to the Tirupathi Sri Venkateswara Zoological Park in Tirupathi.

Forest officials had already set up 300 trap cameras to monitor the movement of wild beasts and this morning they caught the fifth leopard.

Operation Leopard has been going on continuously since August 15 in the state.

Earlier, on August 28, a fourth leopard was caught near the seventh mile of the Tirumala Ghat in Andhra Pradesh.

Nageswarao, Chief Conservator of Forest said, "In the early hours of Monday we caught a leopard in Tirumala Ghat near Seventh Mile of the Alipiri Footway. Till today, we have caught four leopards and shifted them to SV Zoo Park and we have set up 300 CCTV cameras to monitor wildlife movement and we are going to arrange 500 more CCTVs in upcoming days to protect devotees.