Ghaziabad, Aug 4 (IANS): A leopard-like animal was seen outside a house in sector-3F of Vaishali in Ghaziabad early on Friday. The owner of the house was out of town on holiday. He saw the CCTV footage outside his house on his phone and feared the animal was moving around.

However, for the last 4 days, no other clues have been found to prove that the animal is a leopard. On RWA information, the forest department ranger surveyed the entire area with a team but no clue of any leopard-like animal was found. Currently 3 teams of forest department are engaged in tracking the animal. However, till now there have been no reports of the animal attacking anyone.

The forest department has alerted the rangers of Noida, Delhi, and Faridabad as well where there are forested areas.

However, people have panicked on the news and are shying away from venturing out.

DFO Deeksha Bhandari told IANS, "On August 1, I received this information after which I sent my team immediately. For the last 4 days, we have not received any such marks to prove that it is a leopard. However, we care about the local people and apart from the survey, we are also interacting with the people. "

She added, "We have put our 3 teams on patrol. Currently, according to CCTV footage, this animal looks to be from the cat family which includes wildcats, leopards and others. It has a capacity to run up to 100 km. Due to the densely populated area, the possibility of a leopard coming into the area is extremely low."

"We have shown this video to many of our seniors as well. We also found in the video that when it comes to the bike, its size seems to be very small. However a leopard or lion are bigger in size. Even if it's a leopard cub he would not be alone, at the moment our team is patrolling. We do not want to do any kind of negligence. "