Woman Claims Sighting Leopard At Odisha Airport, Prompts Search Operation

Personnel of the Odisha forest department on Saturday launched a search operation at the Biju Patnaik International Airport here, after a woman claimed to have spotted a leopard near the dump yard area, officials said.

The forest department officials along with the local police scanned the area carrying nets, traps and other equipment, but could not find any trace of the leopard, they said.

Earlier in the morning, the woman, a worker at the dump yard, claimed to have spotted a leopard there, a forest official said.

However, only pug marks of jackal were found during the search operation of the high-security airport premises, "but there was no sign of any leopard", he said.

"We have tied a few hens to nearby trees as bait... If a leopard is in the vicinity, we will catch the animal when it comes to feed on the hens," the official said. In 2019, a leopard was caught from the Bhubaneswar airport premises and later released in the nearby Chandaka forest.

The authorities of Biju Patnaik International Airport and the Veer Surendra Sai Airport at Jharsuguda had also received threats about the presence of bombs on two different flights on Thursday, but those later turned out to be hoax, the officials said.

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