Technical team with elephants deployed to control big cat sighting in Kanchanpur

Kanchanpur: Panic has gripped residents of Beldandi Rural Municipality-2 in Kanchanpur after a tiger was reportedly spotted in a nearby sugarcane field.

The big cat was seen around 7 a.m. in a field located approximately 100 meters from Shuklaphanta National Park, according to Narad Singh Aryal, ward chair of Beldandi-2. “The tiger seen in the sugarcane field this morning has not been brought under control, and the locals are panicked,” he said. “A team with elephants is coming from the park now.”

However, Purushottam Wagle, information officer at Shuklaphanta National Park, stated that the initial assessment suggests it may be a leopard rather than a tiger. “We have sent two elephants along with technicians from the office to the area,” Wagle said. “We suspect it is a leopard rather than a tiger, and efforts are being made to control it.”

Teams from the National Park Office and the Nepali Army have been deployed to the area to manage the situation.