India: Recently, a video of a goat tied to a tree with spotlights on it, probably to help the hunter easily find its prey, awaiting its end, went viral.
Mail Today has seen this video and two more such videos that show a leopard eating the goat. All the three videos had been shot from the same angle and showed two similar trees to which the goat was tied.
Villagers said the Aravalli Hills area of Gurgaon boasts about 35-40 leopards but the rise in the number of dead big cats is worrying them. They are hinting at a possible poaching racket in the area, though there is no tangible evidence to back the claim.
Rajesh Wats, the RWA president of Aravali Retreat, also confirmed that there were rumours doing the rounds about such incidents (poaching). "We have also received complaints from villagers about a goat tied to a tree to lure big cats in one of the farmhouses here. As the matter was serious, we lodged a complaint with the wildlife department to investigate it," Wats said.
The villagers also showed this correspondent photographs of two dead leopards that they claimed were found in January this year. This takes the total number of dead leopards to seven within the last one year, a number that has raised many eyebrows.
