Elderly woman killed in leopard attack

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: An elderly woman who had gone out to answer nature’s call was killed in the leopard attack at Shiur village in Vaijapur tehsil of the district on Tuesday

The deceased has been identified as Jhumbarbai Manikrao Mandade (65, Jiri, Vaijapur taluka). This is the third death in a leopard attack in the last 3 months. Jhumbarbai Mandade and her family lived on a farm (gut no. 28) in Jiri. Around 5 am today, when she went out of her house to answer nature’s call, a leopard attacked her and dragged her 100 meters before killing her. On receiving information about the incident, MLA Ramesh Bornare, villagers, forest department officials and employees reached the spot.

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Forest Dept officials taken to task

For the past several days, leopards have been roaming in the area. Due to this, there is an atmosphere of fear among the villagers. The villagers expressed anger at the forest department officials and employees by raising a question as to why they were not serious about catching leopards. The villagers took an aggressive stance saying that the rites would not be performed on that woman until the leopard was caught. When MLA Ramesh Bornare and PSI Vaibhav Rankhamb convinced the villagers, the postmortem on the woman’s body was performed at the health sub-centre in Shiur.

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3rd victim in 3 months

A leopard attacked Mahesh Siddharth Akhade ( 9), the son of a cotton picker in the Kavitkheda area on January 15, 2025. The boy died on the spot. In the second case, a leopard attacked Rituja Sachin Kardak (3, Tandulwadi, Gangapur) at 6.30 pm on March 28 while she was playing in the courtyard in front of her house in Valan. She died in the incident. While these cases were fresh, the third incident happened again on Tuesday, creating panic in the area.

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3 leopard cubs found

Three leopard cubs were found by labourers in the farm of Bhagwan Machhindra Tupe gut no 154 of Babhulgaon Budruk in Vaijapur on Tuesday afternoon. As soon as the labourers got information about this, Bhagwan Tupe, Pintu Tupe and others informed Forest Guard Badve about it. However, Badve did not reach the spot till late evening.