Imagine explaining this to your bosses in Japan.
A young leopard entered the Suzuki Powertrain plant in Haryana early on Thursday and, fearing an attack by the big cat, the management halted production.
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According to the Economic Times of India, the animal entered the premises in Manesar and a security guard spotted it around 2.30 am and raised an alarm. Production was stopped as workers came out of the factory.
The factory, on 750 acres in the foothills of the Aravali mountain range, makes diesel engines for Maruti Suzuki India cars, churning out over 1,200 engines in a single shift.
“A team of Wildlife and Forest Department were conducting a search exercise for the leopard. But there are too many huge machines in the factory and the leopard might hide under one of them,” a forest officer told local media.
He said the leopard was also caught on CCTV cameras installed at the factory. Over 2,000 workers and staff waited outside the main gate.
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By GlobalDataChannelNewsAsia said nearly 100 police and forest officials carrying tranquilliser guns were pursuing the big cat inside the factory.
“Many teams of police and forest guards are searching for the leopard. We have cordoned off the entire complex,” Ashok Bakshi, a deputy commissioner of police in Manesar, told AFP.
A spokesman for Maruti Suzuki said “they are in the process of collecting more details” but did not elaborate further.
The report said deadly conflict between humans and animals has increased in recent years in India largely due to shrinking forest habitats and urban expansion.
India’s environment ministry said in August that 1,144 people were killed between April 2014 and May 2017 by wild animals – an average of more than one a day.
There are an estimated 12,000-14,000 leopards in India which are frequently killed when they stray into villages. Officials say one is killed on average every day.
In January a leopard was beaten to death by a mob outside Gurgaon, a satellite city outside Delhi, after it attacked and injured eight people.
Last year a leopard injured three children after wandering into a school in Bangalore in India’s south. Local schools went into lockdown for days until the leopard was located and tranquillised.
No word yet on the Suzuki trespusser’s capture or dispersal.
Wikipedia says the Indian leopard (Panthera pardus fusca) is a subspecies widely distributed on the Indian subcontinent and listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List because populations have declined following habitat loss and fragmentation, poaching for the illegal trade of skins and body parts, and persecution due to conflict situations.
