The victim had got up to relieve himself in the night when the leopard attacked him
Rajkot: A 70-year-old man was mauled to death by a leopard in Padiyarka village of Mahuva taluka in Bhavnagar district early on Wednesday morning. The victim was identified as Bhana Bariya. He was sleeping at his farm on the outskirts of Padiyarka village when the incident took place.
“Bariya was sleeping alone at the farm and had got up to relieve himself when the leopard attacked him. The animal also ate part of Bariya’s hand,” R R Chauhan, range forest officer of Mahuva said.
According to Chauhan, it is suspected that the leopard mistook Bariya for prey and attacked him. Bariya’s body was found by another villager early in the morning who informed the village sarpanch who contacted the forest officials. The body was sent for post-mortem and the cages have been set up to trap the leopard.
There have been several cases of human-animal conflict in the forest areas of Gujarat in the recent past. Between 2015 and 2019, leopards attacked 718 people in different parts of the state resulting in 67 deaths, the government had told the state Assembly in March this year.