Missing 4-year-old girl mauled to death by leopard in J&K's Budgam

A four-year-old girl was mauled to death by a leopard in the Ompora area of central Kashmir’s Budgam district on Thursday evening, police said.

The girl identified as Adha Shakil, daughter of Shakil Ahmad -- a resident of a housing colony in Ompora, was taken by a leopard while she was playing in the lawn of her house.

He said that after receiving the information, the police, wildlife teams and the Army swung into action and launched a massive search operation to trace the missing girl adding that the body of the girl was found in a nearby nursery on Friday morning.

During the initial searches itself they locals had found blood marks and suspected that a leopard may have taken the girl away. And in the later hours of the searches their fears came true as they found body parts of the girl in a nearby nursery. It is not the first time that leopards have been spotted in the area since the colony is situated near this dense nursery.

The locals said that leopards were seen roaming in the area for quite some time now and accused wildlife officials of doing little to help them.

“We have been pleading with the wildlife officials for long to do something about it. This nursery has become so dense now and they need to take steps to ensure such gruesome incidents don’t take place”, said Syed Khalid, local resident of Ompora Humhama Colony.

Adha Shakil is the niece of Muskan Mumtaz, who took to Twitter to update that the four year-old-girl had gone missing.

She said, "She was taken by a leopard that scaled their wall in Humhama. Her brother was able to get away."

Locals said that the leopards had been roaming in the area for many weeks and some of them were even captured.

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