6-year-old girl killed in leopard attack in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh

A six-year old girl was mauled to death by a cheetah at Tirumala in Andhra Pradesh’s Tirupati district, the police said on Saturday. The girl who hailed from the Nellore district of the state was on her way to Tirumala on foot for darshan of Lord Venkateswara.

The girl went missing on Friday night on the Alipiri walkway near the Narasimha Swamy temple while coming to Tirumala. Officials said that the victim identified as Akshita was found dead at the Lakshminarasimhaswamy temple in the early hours of Saturday.

The girl was found missing at around 7 pm following which her parents started searching for her. The filed a missing complaint with the police at Tirumala when they could not find her. A public announcement was made with the hope of finding the girl and the news was spread widely on social media.

The police could not conduct a search operation on Friday night, however a search was carried out in the early hours of Saturday. Soon, blood stains were found on the ground by the police at the 7th mile on the footpath to Tirumala.

Divisional Forest Officer(DFO) of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) said, “With the help of our preliminary investigation, we have concluded that the girl lost her life in a wild bear attack. We are suspecting that the girl was abducted by a wild bear when she was walking alone and it attacked her as she was deviated from the foot path”.

The DFO further said that they are also trying to find evidences through CCTV footage.

“The doubts will be cleared after we receive the postmortem report from the Government Hospital in Tirupati, where her body was sent”, he added.