Goat Herder Uses Sickle To Kill Leopard That Attacked Him

A 39-year-old man was recently attacked by a leopard while he was out to graze his livestock but he managed to kill it by slashing its head with a sickle. The man won't be facing any charges as the forest department was told it was an act of self-defense.

Naresh Singh Saun from the Indian state of Uttarakhand said this was the first time that he came across a leopard while grazing goats, Hindustan Times reported.

Talking about the Wednesday incident, Saun said that the leopard emerged from the bushes and pounced on one of the goats. "I tried to drive it away by making noise. But the leopard left the goat and suddenly jumped towards me. I was initially petrified. But then I realized that if I didn’t act, I would be dead," the man said.

Saun added that he immediately used his sickle against the animal and it worked. "The injured leopard fled but fell unconscious some distance away. The head wound from the sickle led to its death," he said. Saun escaped with minor injuries.

He said if he hadn't hit the leopard with the sickle, he wouldn't have been alive today. "People claim that leopards run away if an alarm is raised, but in my case, instead of running away, it attacked me. In such a situation, I had no other option but to hit it back," he added.

The herder informed forest officials about the incident and they arrived at the spot. The officers took the body of the two-year-old big cat into their possession. "It was a female leopard and we cremated it after post-mortem," ranger Dinesh Joshi told Hindustan Times.

Though killing a leopard is an illegal activity in India, Saun won't be facing charges. "Villagers revealed that if Saun hadn’t resisted with a sickle in self-defense, the leopard would have killed him. Wildlife Protection Act 1972 gives some relief in such cases where no option is left for a man for his protection from wild animals,” said Joshi.

Recently, an elderly couple fought off a leopard that tried to grab their 2-year-old granddaughter in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The family was asleep when the big cat sneaked into their yard from a nearby forest. The child's foot was already on the animal's jaw when the couple woke up. They fought off the animal with a stick though the leopard turned on them.