A four-year-old boy — who was walking home with his mother from Surgal village to neighbouring Tharwa village in Haryana’s Ambala district — was reportedly attacked by a “leopard”, leaving him injured with lacerations on his neck at about 5 pm on Sunday.
The injured kid, identified as Dipanshu of Tharwa village, is undergoing treatment at the Government Medical College and Hospital in Chandigarh Sector 32.

The police said the boy was out of danger.

Dipanshu’s mother Rajni said she saw the “leopard picking up my kid. It was very big in size. I started shouting for help when the villagers gathered and they chased the animal with sticks. The villagers soon brought back my son, who was bleeding seriously as the leopard had left marks on his neck.”

However, a wildlife officer says there were “no traces or pugmarks of the leopard”.

Assistant sub-inspector Sube Singh, Naraingarh area’s Mahua Kheri police post in-charge, said, “The kid has sharp injury marks on his neck. Two youths of the village claimed that they saw a leopard in a sugarcane field and they made a video of the same.”

However, wildlife inspector Rakesh Kumar said, “We have not found any traces or pugmarks of the leopard at the spot or in the area. It appears the video is old and rumour spread in the area about the presence of the leopard but we could not find any trace.”