Locals demand to turn the area into a hospital site
Abrar A. Mattoo
SRINAGAR, June 4: A sloping wilderness of nearly 560 Kanals that borders the housing colony at Ompora, Budgam has been turned into a sanctuary by a group of eight to 14 leopards from the last four years.
Following the gruesome incident where four-year-old girl Adaa was taken by a leopard and then killed subsequently, the residents of the colony are demanding to turn the wilderness into a construction site for the recently sanctioned hospital for the district.
It’s pertinent to mention here that four-year-old Adaa disappeared from her house lawns where she was playing with her bicycle on Thursday evening, and was found after nearly 14-hours search operation on Friday morning. Her death sent shock waves through the Kashmir valley and renewed the debate on the man-animal conflict in Kashmir.
For nearly four years, the residents claim that they have been requesting the administration to rehabilitate the leopards, but unfortunately, their pleas have fallen on the deaf ears sofar.
“Had our prayers been answered earlier, we may not have lost such a precious life, but nevertheless, what we demand now is that the wilderness be turned into a site for newly sanctioned district hospital for Budgam. This would ensure no more precious lives are lost to predator attacks such as these and a wasting patch of land is brought into proper use,” Mohammad Younis Rather, a resident of housing colony, Ompora, Budgam told KashmirDespatch.
“The administration has promised that they’d take care of the situation now. I am hopeful that my Grand-daughters death would be a wakeup call for them and they’d take the requisite action,” added Dr. Ghulam Hassan Mir, the aggrieved grandfather of four-year-old victim said while talking to Kashmir Despatch.
The residents of housing colony Ompora and other nearby localities fear that more deaths would follow in their respective areas, because they assume that the taste of human blood may have turned the involved leopard into a man-eating predator, and it wouldn’t far when others in his group would also start mauling and killing civilians.
“These leopards have been terrorizing our locality from past many years. There are nearly 2100 households in this colony alone, and none of us go out after dark,” said Muzammil Yousuf, another resident of housing colony, Ompora told Kashmir Despatch.
While the death of four-year-old Adaa has sparked anger amongst the residents of Ompora and nearby residential areas, it has also fueled the concern of environmental activists. The activists are not shying away from blaming the government from not protecting the animal habitat and taking timely measures.
“From the past few years, the man-animal conflict has been on a steep ascend, and its only a matter of time when it’d grow beyond our control. Wild predators have killed, mauled and ruined thousands of lives thus far, and four-year-old is the most shocking and newest addition to those tragedies. But these tragedies would not subside until we won’t spare our time and energy, on both institutional and local level, to preserve the animal habitats,” added, Abid Ahmad Baba, a local environmental activist opined while talking to KashmirDespatch.
