“I can’t close my eyes. Every time I do, I see the leopard dragging away my grandson,” says 70-year-old Suman Arjun Bombe, her voice trembling.

“I don’t want to go to school. The wagh (which means tiger. Some locals refer to leopards as wagh) attacked Shivanya,” five-year-old Vaishnavi tells her grandfather Popat Jadhav.

These words capture the deep fear gripping the villagers of Pimparkhed in Shirur. Over the past month, within a 5km radius covering Pimparkhed and nearby Jambut, three people have lost their lives in tragic encounters between humans and leopards. Rohan Vilas Bombe (13) was killed in Shirur taluka on Sunday afternoon, the fifth such death arising from human-leopard conflict in Pune district this year. Following the incident, angry villagers set on fire a forest depa

See Full Page