A male adult leopard that had been roaming inside the highly sensitive Pune Airport premises for nearly eight months was tranquilised and captured on Thursday.  The rescue involved a 30-member joint team from the Pune Forest Department, RESQ Charitable Trust, the Indian Air Force, and Pune Airport Authorities.

The leopard’s presence was first confirmed on April 28. Since then, officials tracked its movement across underground service tunnels, dense vegetation patches, and low-footfall areas within the airport — terrains that made locating and capturing the big cat extremely difficult. On December 4, monitoring teams confirmed that the leopard had entered the airport’s underground tunnel network. ILLUSTRATIONS/UDAY MOHITE