Lakshitha went missing on Friday evening around 7 pm on the Alipiri-Tirumala pedestrian route; her body was found early on Saturday.
The victim Lakshitha. (Supplied)
A pilgrimage to Tirupati turned tragic for a family from Nellore in Andhra Pradesh after a leopard dragged a girl away and mauled her to death on the evening of Friday, 11 August. Her body was found on Saturday.
Six-year-old Lakshitha was visiting the hilltop temple with her parents Dinesh and Sasikala, when she went missing from the the Alipiri-Tirumala pedestrian route between 6.45 pm and 7 pm on Friday. Her parents reported the girl missing to the TTD (Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams) Police around 11.30 pm.
“The parents initially thought that she had been kidnapped,” a Tirupati Zone Forest officer told South First.
On receiving the missing complaint, the police, security personnel, and forest staff launched a search operation. They suspected that a sloth bear might have dragged the girl away.
“Though the search operation had started immediately, the rescuers couldn’t do much as it was dark,” the official added.
He said other visitors to the temple found Lakshitha’s body near the Narasimha Swamy Temple around 4 am on Saturday. The body bore severe injury marks, believed to be inflicted by the leopard. “She might have succumbed to the injuries caused by the leopard,” the official added.
The police said the stretch from where the girl had gone missing did not have CCTV surveillance cameras. “The girl was running ahead of her family. She had lost contact with the family earlier as well,” a police officer told reporters.
The girl’s body was sent to the Sri Venkateswara Ramnarayan Ruia Government General Hospital for a post-mortem examination. The girl was a resident of Pothireddypalem village in the Kovuru Mandal.
TTD officials are yet to respond to South First.
Speaking to reporters, a relative of the victim blamed the TTD officials for the incident.
“Why didn’t they erect a fence to avoid animal attacks after a boy was attacked in June,” she asked.
On 24 June, a three-year-old boy was attacked and dragged away by a leopard at the footsteps of the ghat road near Anjaneya Swamy statue and Sri Venkateswara Temple, when he was walking with his family. However, the police rescued the boy.
Even as the latest incident has once again created panic among the pilgrims, the police advised parents not to leave their children alone.
Spread across 82,500 hectares, the Seshachalam forests have several species of wildlife including leopards and bears. Around 2,700 hectares of the forest, which is also known for red-sanders smuggling, falls under the TTD.
As per reports, the TTD and the Forest Department have installed camera traps in the vicinity. Some of them have the provision to raise an alert on sighting a leopard.
“We will increase vigilance and the number of CCTV cameras in the area,” Tirupathi SP P Parameshwar Reddy told reporters.
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