The Leopard of Rudraprayag was a male man-eating leopard, reputed to have killed 126 people. It was eventually killed by hunter and author Jim Corbett.
The first victim of the leopard was from Benji Village, and was killed in 1918. For the next eight years, people were afraid to venture alone at night on the road to the Hindu holy shrines of Kedarnath and Badrinath, for it passed through the leopard's territory, and few villagers left their houses after dark. The leopard, preferring human flesh, would break down doors, leap through windows, claw through the mud or thatch walls of huts and drag the occupants out before devouring them.[citation needed] According to official records, the leopard killed 126 people. However, Corbett notes that the number of deaths was probably higher due to unreported kills and deaths due to injuries sustained in attacks.
Units of Gurkha soldiers and British soldiers were sent to track it, but failed. Attempts to kill the leopard with high powered gin traps and poison also failed. Several well-known hunters tried to capture the leopard and the British government offered financial rewards. All of this, however, ended in failure. In the autumn of 1925, Jim Corbett took it upon himself to try to kill the leopard and, after a ten-week hunt, he successfully did so on 2 May 1926.
Reasons for becoming a man-eater
Corbett's notes revealed that this leopard, a large elderly male, was in fine condition except for a few healed injuries sustained from hunters after it had become a man-eater. The leopard had started hunting people eight years earlier, when it was still young; therefore it was not old age that caused it to turn to hunting people. Corbett wrote that, in his opinion, human bodies left unburied during disease epidemics were the main reason for the Rudraprayag and Panar leopards to become man-eaters.
这个jim corbett就是19年前(也就是1907年)干掉查姆帕瓦特食人虎的那位英雄,他一生击毙过不下10只食人魔