Hyderabad: A young leopard was killed on the Mahbubnagar-Raichur stretch of National Highway 167 near Devarakadra town, in a hit-and-run case that involved a speeding vehicle, on Tuesday night. The incident came to light around 3.30 a.m. on Wednesday when a police patrol van came across the dead leopard lying on the road, and the police personnel calling the Mahbubnagar district forest department officials to inform of their discovery.
The dead leopard was identified as a female, and around two and a half years old, by Forest Department officials. The impact of the speeding vehicle hitting the leopard that was crossing the highway was such that the animal died on the spot, and tufts of its fur were strewn around the accident spot. There was no information on the vehicle that was involved in this hit-and-run incident.
According to Ch. Ganga Reddy, the District Forest Officer, Mahbubnagar, the leopard was found dead on the highway close to Manyamkonda Sri Lakshmi Venkateswara Swamy temple near Choudaripally village, a few kilometres from Devarakadra town. “Though the forest in the area is degraded, it is a good leopard habitat. There is a lot of scrub, some hillocks with enough places for a leopard to hide,” he said.
Forest department officials on Wednesday morning stand guard over the carcass of a young female leopard killed in National Highway 167 near Devarakadra in Mahbubnagar district in Telangana on Tuesday night.
This is not the first time a leopard has been killed by a speeding vehicle on the stretch of the road where Tuesday’s roadkill occurred. According to officials, in 2007, another leopard was killed on the spot on the road in the same location, after it was run over by a speeding vehicle.
