Haryana’s Panchkula town witnessed high drama on Thursday after a leopard strayed into a colony creating big scare among residents with cops allegedly cane charging some photo and video journalists eager to click pictures, a charge denied by the police.
The wild cat strayed into Sector 10 in Panchkula near here and stayed put in a house there since early this morning. The inmates of the house and those in the neighbourhood had been taken out safely.
By evening, wildlife department officials of Haryana and those from the Chattbir zoological park in Punjab, nearly 20 km from here, managed to take away the animal after tranquillising it.
The incident attracted a large number of onlookers and scribes including press photographers and video journalists from Panchkula and Chandigarh rushed to cover the incident.
The police and wild life department officials initially prevented the photographers from clicking pictures saying they should be allowed to catch the animal first. As soon as an official put a cloth over the animal, the action was resented by the scribes.
“When a photographer tried to remove the cloth from the animal, suddenly the officials, including the cops, pounced on him. The cops then lathicharged all those who tried to come to the photographer’s rescue,” a journalist on the scene of the incident said.
He also said a policeman, who was later suspended, deployed at the place had threatened some scribes while another official tried to run his vehicle over another scribe.