Nagpur: 6 animals found dead in Bhandara near each other

NAGPUR: A day after a leopard got electrocuted in a Ramtek farm, forest officials from Bhandara on Saturday found carcasses of another six animals — four wild and two domestic.
Prima facie it seems that the deaths of all six animals are somehow connected as the timeframe and their geographical proximity matches to a great extent.
Forest officials have so far accounted for a female leopard, two foxes, a jungle cat and two domestic dogs.
Sources in the forest department told TOI that all the animals were found in what one would identify as a ‘zudpi jungle’. Preliminary inspection suggests that the deaths occured two days ago.
Assistant conservator of forests Yashwant Nagulwar said the village sarpanch informed officials about the carcasses in the afternoon. “Our team reached the spot and started combing the area. We found the female leopard at one spot and the remaining animals in proximity to each other,” he said.
The aerial distance between the two spots is hardly 1 kilometre, said Nagulwar. “By road it must be 2-3km. Everything points to a case of poisoning as their bodies are intact. No part is missing. We are expecting the postmortem report on Monday,” he said.
So far, officials are ruling out foul play considering that these animals were not inside farmland. “It could be that all of them ate something which had been poisonous,” said Nagulwar.
Different theories are currently floating around in the area as to what poisonous thing all these animals consumed. A forest official said, “Sometimes when a domestic animal dies in the village, they dispose it of in such areas and also sprinkle some chemicals so that decomposition takes place faster. It is possible that all six of them ate something like that, which would explain their same death timeline as well as proximity.”
On Friday, a leopard in Ramtek was electrocuted after it came in contact with a live wire installed in a farm. Forest officials have seized the wire and taken into custody the farm’s owner, identified as NS Shivarkar.