Watch: Leopard beaten to death with sticks, stones by mob in Karnataka

Bengaluru: A devastating fight between man and a leopard resulted in the death of the rare animal, with the mob beating up the leopard with sticks and stones on Wednesday in front of forest officers. The villagers surrounded and killed the leopard with sticks in Kurubarahalli village of Chitradurga district, some 200 km from state capital Bengaluru. The incident was captured on video.

A leopard beaten to death by villagers in Karnataka's Chitradurga. All this in the presence of forest officials. Watch the video, will make you think who the real wild animals are. @WeAreBangalore @prernabindra @leofsaldanha #Wildlife #leopard pic.twitter.com/sjTsXASpf9

— Harish Upadhya (@harishupadhya) July 3, 2019

The leopard had attacked two locals in the village's pomegranate garden in the last two days. The villagers, furious at the attack, had since been on a hunt for the big cat to avoid a repeat, reported by NDTV.

The mob found the leopard on Wednesday perched atop a tree. The video shot by an eyewitness shows several villagers throwing stones at the leopard, even as officials, vastly outnumbered by the villagers, tried to stop them from killing the animal.

Finally, the leopard jumped down from the tree and was seen chasing one of the villagers. The mob went after the animal and savagely killed it with huge wooden sticks and stones.

A similarly gruesome incident took place in Assam in May, where villagers had killed a leopard, gouged its eyes out and chopped off the paws after, they said, the animal had critically injured a man in the area. They had kept the body of the leopard hanging for days after the incident.