Big cat sniffing around a house compound at Vijayanagar Fourth Stage caught on camera

Mysore/Mysuru: After a video of lions roaming on Gujarat streets went viral, a similar footage from Mysuru is doing the rounds on social media which shows a leopard sniffing around a compound of a house in Vijayanagar 4th Stage in the wee hours of Tuesday (Mar. 14).

The scary video, a CCTV footage from the house of Kodandera Harish Machia, opens on the leopard moving in front of the house gate and entering the garden in front of the compound. Minutes later, the big cat can be seen exiting the area.

The footage of the leopard was caught between 1.14 am and 1.19 am and the house is located at Vijayanagar 4th Stage Main Road (80 ft Road), right opposite the Post Office. The next building to Machia’s house is the Office of the Drug Controller which is 200 metres away and there are no houses between Machia’s house and the Drug Controller’s Office.

“The Main Road is sparsely populated and there are many vacant sites with parthenium growth. At 1.14 am, you can clearly see the leopard coming in front of our gate. We park two cars outside and one inside. So along one of the cars, the leopard walks in stealthily. We have got a side gate there and the CCTV footage shows the feline sniffing around,” Harish Machia told SOM.

“The next part of the video, one can see the leopard walking towards the compound wall in front of the main gate. At 1.19 am, it just slithers away. And that part is not captured by the CCTV camera. We have two CCTV cameras that could capture the visuals and the timings,” he added.

Harish said that they heard no sound as they were fast asleep. “We never knew this would happen. My wife is currently in the US and when I caught up with her at 5.30 am yesterday, she told me that she saw an animal walking into the compound and was sure that it was not a dog. She spotted the animal when she was tracking the CCTV footage on her mobile phone. She asked me to check and I woke up my son and he played the recordings. It was clear footage,” Harish said. 

The landmark near Harish’s house is Marimallappa’s College. “On the left of Marimallapa’s College is a road and my house is located precisely 500 metres from Marimallappa’s College Junction. The parallel road behind the Main Road is another main road that leads to National Public School,” he said.

Other sightings

On Feb. 25, a leopard was spotted at Amulyanagar in Vijayanagar 4th Stage. The locals had alerted the Forest Department and a cage was placed. Also, probably the same big cat was spotted at KBL Enclave a fortnight ago. 

“A month back, about 50 mts.  from where we live, a stray dog that was loved by most people went missing suddenly. It lived in front of the house of a doctor couple and the couple had come to my home as we had CCTV cameras. But the visuals were not captured as the area was quite far,” Harish said.

The doctor couple then consulted a naturalist who spotted pug marks, alerted the neighbourhood about the leopard’s presence. Even blood stains were found on the footpath when the stray dog was dragged along. 

Leopard movements have been caught on many CCTV cameras in the locality and they are seen in their backyard and sometimes moving around the compound walls. Residents of the area are afraid to come out during the night time and most of them avoid coming out after 7 pm.