Panic-stricken villagers batter two leopards to death

Published on Friday 19 January 2007 00:06

FRIGHTENED people have chased and battered to death two rare leopards in India, highlighting increasing numbers of endangered wildlife that are killed as rapid economic development destroys habitats.

In Kashmir, villagers attacked a leopard on Wednesday after it injured two boys in Pulwama district, 45 miles south of Srinagar, the state's summer capital.

"Panicky villagers ruthlessly killed the leopard with stones and sticks," said a police officer.

In the western city of Nasik, television footage showed a group of people beating a leopard with logs as it lay on the ground apparently after being cornered. It later died.

Officials in Kashmir say more than a dozen people, many of them children, have been killed in the past year by leopards and black bears, while half-a-dozen wild animals have been killed.