A shocking and gut-wrenching video from the Shahjahanpur area of Meerut surfaced on social media on Friday of a group of children playing in a park who come across a leopard cub. Upon finding the cub, one child can be seen forcefully pulling the cub and abusing it even as the poor helpless being tries to escape. The child had also tied a string around the cub and the moment the leopard tries to escape, it is pulled back in a dangerous incident of animal cruelty; no less against the member of an endangered species.
Sometime after the video surfaced on social media, the Meerut Forest Division, in a tweet, said that, "The leopard cub was reunited with its mother under the supervision of experts today morning around 3.30 AM."
A case of cruelty against an endangered species
Due to population declines brought on by habitat loss and fragmentation, poaching for the illicit trade in human body parts, and persecution as a result of armed conflict, it is classified as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.
According to a recent worldwide study that quantifies the damage presented by roads to the survival of animal populations around the world, the leopard (Panthera pardus) faces an 83% greater chance of extinction in North India as a result of roadkill. The North Indian leopard population is most at risk of going extinct in the next 50 years if current levels of roadkill continue. This is one of four animal populations that have been recognised as being most vulnerable to extinction.
