Cat Scan

In the Junnar taluka, about 200 km from Mumbai, they always hated people who did not add sugar in their tea. But now in this rich sugarcane belt, they hate the panther more, as the story goes, for his diet. This year in Junnar, panthers have invaded the area and attacked 22 people, killing 10 of them. In the last three months alone, there have been eight deaths, mostly children. The wild cats here have consumed nearly 700 cattle in the last two-and-a-half years. Nobody is even counting the number of dogs that have disappeared.

People in the nearby villages are asking the forest office to kill the panthers quickly. The trouble is, the deputy conservator of forests in Junnar, Ashok Khadse, says "I am paid to protect the panther". All he can do is ask his inexperienced, ill-equipped, nervous men who are yet to receive a life insurance from the government to lay traps in sugarcane fields, inserting some dog or a goat as prey. Despite the odds, nearly 80 panthers have been caged in the last two years—something the forest office seriously suspects is a world record, especially since the catch is from within a perimeter of just 50 kilometers. But the villagers are not clapping. Actually, they once almost hit a forest officer who went to attend the funeral of a panther victim.

After forests near Malshet Ghat in the western ghats were steadily depleted of deer, foxes and other prey, the panther had to move out of the old home. The animal found a perfect hiding place in the thick sugarcane plantations of neighbouring Junnar. The plantations are so dense that one cannot see beyond the first two or three rows of crop. And former Maharashtra chief minister Sharad Pawar's blessings have made this region one of the most irrigated places in the country—there are five dams in this single taluka, supplying so much water that the panthers would have never had it so good in the jungle. So they are breeding fast, hoping their cubs would live to their full 20-year life span in these lush new environs. Even these conditions are only marginally better than the hard times they'd had in the jungle. Junnar's sugarcane fields are not quite the perfect world that ushered in these proud animals when someone created them. Shahaji Deshmukh, the only veterinarian in this area, has conducted post-mortems on panthers that died following accidents or illness. "They all died on empty stomachs," he says.

But the villagers aren't moved. They want all the panthers killed, as revenge for the loved ones they lost and as the only quick effective way to terminate the menace in their otherwise simple lives. Political predators too have already walked into the ring. "We are getting very used to morchas visiting our office," Khadse says. The Shiv Sena recently led a morcha demanding killing of the remaining 30 to 50 panthers.

With a year-old panther dangerous enough to kill, the region has seen a dramatic increase in attacks. There is, however, a simple solution to the problem. "Grow some other crop or grow sugarcane only in patches so that the cats don't have vast hiding tracts," says Khadse. That's easier said than done: sugarcane is a lucrative cash crop, and banks give out loans to the farmer even before the crop is sown. A farmer grows as much as possible in his field, letting the dense plantations come up straight up to his home, and even a hungry panther on his doorstep.

A few days ago, five-year-old Manisha Doke was killed by a panther in Belha village. Says her father Sanjay Doke, a farmworker: "I don't understand why wild animals are protected. Should we go to the forest so that the panther can live here?" Ten-year-old Sharda Jadav was luckier. She was sleeping outside her home when a panther carried her away by the throat. When her grandmother Yeshoda started screaming, the animal dropped her in the bushes and ran away.The villagers are so angry that forest officials have often called in the police to transport caged panthers to the transit camp because the villagers wanted to stone the animal to death. If anyone goes missing in Junnar, it's always the panther behind it—once officials combed vast tracts of sugarcane fields for a whole night in search of a missing 16-year-old girl, who, it turned out in the morning, had ran away with her boyfriend.

As things are getting hot between forest officials and villagers, Khadse says he has no money or expertise to track down the panthers, cage them and release them into the wild. He sought Rs 30 lakh from the state government for tackling the problem in the short term—he has only got Rs 3 lakh so far. Releasing a single panther in the wild costs him Rs 40,000, and with about 25 panthers released so far, he is more than just broke. A single cage costs about Rs 25,000. At least 10 cages are required to be placed strategically to trap one panther. With 30 to 50 panthers believed to be at large, the department needs 300 to 500 cages. Khadse has less than 50, including donations by two sugar factories.

Short of asking the government to give panthers voter cards, Junnar's forest office has tried every means to impress upon the government that the animals need special attention. Khadse has even written to the forest ministry saying that panthers can bring in money. "Each of them can fetch between Rs 5 and Rs 8 lakh through sale to foreign zoos or sanctuaries." The forest office has about 100 guards, most of whom have never seen a free panther in their lives. They nervously scout sugarcane plantations, wearing cricket gloves with Kingfisher written on them. Khadse also wants the compensation given to victims to be raised to logical levels.

While killing a panther comes with a fine of Rs 25,000, the family of a minor killed by the cat gets Rs 20,000. An adult victim fetches Rs 40,000. "So the government values a panther more than a human," says Rajaram Jadav, cousin of five-year-old Dipali Jadav who was recently killed by a panther. Khadse has recommended an increase in compensation to Rs 2 lakh for an adult victim and Rs 1 lakh for a minor. But the government, he says, has not responded. It's in the face of such indifference, coupled with a secret glee at a whole new 'natural' habitat that has opened up for panthers, that Khadse says: "Human beings and panthers have to learn to coexist." Again, easier said than done in Junnar today.