URI, BUDGAM AND SRINAGAR —
Fourteen-year-old Shahid Ahmad Ganai took his family's cows for grazing some 200 meters away from his house in Trikanjan, a hilly terrain on the Indian side of Kashmir.
But that Sunday afternoon was interrupted with sudden screams. His father, Abdul Jabbar Ganai, 52, and mother, Parveena Begum, 47, frantically ran towards the grazing spot in the remote Boniyar village neighborhood of Baramulla district.
"We rushed toward the spot and saw our youngest son, Shakir, rushing toward us in a state of shock," said Ganai, describing what happened on June 12. "He [Shakir] told us that Shahid was attacked by a leopard. Both of us ran as fast as we could to save our son, but all in vain," the distraught father said while pointing towards the site.
Located in the foothills of the Himalayas on the Indian side of Kashmir, the region has about 24,214 square kilometers of forest land constituting around 20% of its total geographical area, including five national parks, 14 wildlife sanctuaries and 35 conservation reserves, official figures show.
The region's forests host several types of wildlife including leopards, bears and wild boars. Humans and animals rarely used to cross each other's paths but in the past two decades, wildlife experts say the "frequency of interactions" between the two has increased.
Data provided by the local wildlife department claims some 234 people have been killed and 2,918 others injured from January 2006 to November 2021 due to man-wildlife conflict across the Kashmir region.
Five leopards and 17 bears were killed after being declared "man-eaters" under subsection [6] of section 11 of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 of India since 2011.
The mutilated body of Shahid was found deep inside the forest by locals accompanied by police and wildlife officials. The same leopard is said to have struck in another village of Boniyar just two days later on June 14.
The leopard mauled a 12-year-old girl identified as Rutba Manzoor when she was playing outside her house. Manzoor's family refused VOA's request for comment, with one of the family members saying that they don't want to relive the tragedy and are removing themselves from "anything that disturbs our mental peace."
In just four months, Ganai said five children and more than 50 sheep were killed by the leopard in 11 encounters, leading the residents of Boniyar to hit the streets asking for Jammu and Kashmir Wildlife Department to hunt the animal down.
"Locals, police and wildlife officials killed the leopard after several days of search," Ganai said. "Many lives would have been saved had wildlife officials issued an order to kill the leopard soon after the first incident," the grieving father added.
Mehreen Khaleel, a primatologist and head of Wildlife Research Conservation Foundation, or WRCF, a Kashmir-based NGO, says the interaction between humans and animals in the Kashmir valley has increased in the last two decades, but notes there are additional factors for such conflicts.
"We don't have enough data to support the cause of these increased interactions. Non availability of prey, increased disturbance in wild habitats, change in land use patterns in fringe zones are a possible few of the reasons," Khaleel said. "The large-scale shift from agriculture to horticulture in fringe zones, reduction of escape spaces, closure of natural animal corridors has increased the occurrence," she said, adding that climate change also has played a greater role considering the geographic location of the Kashmir region.
Man-animal conflict in the Kashmir valley is not only confined to the areas closer to forests. The presence of wild animals such as bears, porcupines and leopards have been found in many parts of central Kashmir.
In September, a female bear and her cub were caught by a joint team of police and wildlife department officials from Rajbagh neighborhood of Srinagar city after their movement was spotted inside a posh residential area with the help of CCTV cameras.
On June 4, 2021, Adha Shakil, a 6-year-old girl, was playing with her doll inside the lawn of her two-story house in the Ompora area of central Kashmir's Budgam district when a leopard attacked her and took her to a nearby forest nursery.
"Everything happened in a matter of a few seconds," the victim's grandfather, Ghulam Hassan Mir, told VOA. "She just screamed, and I came out running to see what happened to her. She was missing and the doll she was carrying in her hands was lying on the ground. I immediately figured out that it was a leopard attack and Adha won't return alive."