A leopard has killed a 45-year-old man while he was relieving himself in India in the latest of a string of big cat attacks.
Ram Swaroop Meena was pounced upon by the animal in Rajasthan’s Alwar district when he was outside on Saturday night.
But Mr Meena’s body was only found in the Kishori village of Thanagazi Tehsil on Sunday.
A leopard killed 45-year-old Ram Swaroop Meena when he was relieving himself outside in Rajasthan’s Alwar district on Saturday night (file image)
A postmortem followed and the case was registered by police as an investigation into an unnatural death.
It was quickly realised Mr Meena was killed by a leopard after recognisable paw marks were found near his body.
A trap has been set to try to catch the big cat.
It comes after a leopard decapitated a nine-month-old baby after snatching him from his cot while he was sleeping next to his mother last month.
Dhaval Rathwa was attacked while snoozing at his house in Zari at around 4am on April 16.
This leopard is believed to have decapitated a nine-month-old baby after snatching him from his cot in Zari, India
The eight-year-old leopard clamped its jaws around Dhaval before dragging him away as his mother slept.
His mutilated body was found later that day.
Rangers from the Gujarat State Forest Department caught the big cat in the early hours a day later by using cages stuffed with bait.
Rangers from the Gujarat State Forest Department caught the big cat in the early hours a day later by using cages with bait inside them (file photo)
A five-year-old girl was also killed after being snatched by a leopard while harvesting maize with her grandmother on March 26.
Shrutika Thit and her grandmother Kusum Kaduskar went into the fields in Sakori village in the west-central state of Maharashtra at around 5pm.
The leopard had been lying in wait nearby and seized the young girl, who was from another part of the state and had been visiting her grandmother’s village with her mother Swati.
A leopard was caught after villagers installed a cage following the death of Shrutika Thit
Village spokesperson Vinod Modhave said the girl’s cries alerted her grandmother, who in turn raised the alarm with local residents.
‘The leopard had caught hold of her neck and was dragging her away,’ he told the Times Of India.
‘The villagers in nearby fields hurled stones at the leopard. It abandoned the child and fled.’
Shrutika was taken to hospital in Manchar, but declared dead on arrival.
A leopard was caught two days later in a cage installed after the attack.
Official estimates suggest there are between 12,000 and 14,000 leopards in India.
There are no figures on the number of humans killed by leopards, but experts say there are hundreds of deaths each year.