A four-year-old girl from a family of migrant labourers was found dead on Saturday morning, nearly 17 hours after a leopard dragged her into the forested tea estates of the Anamalai Tiger Reserve (ATR), in what officials described as a rare and tragic incident near Valparai in western Tamil Nadu. The child, M Roshini Kumari, had arrived in the Pachamalai estate area with her parents from Jharkhand just a week earlier.
Her father, Manoj Munda, and mother, Monica Devi, were newly employed tea estate workers in the hilly region. On Friday evening, around 6.30 pm, Roshini was standing beside her mother, who was fetching water near their line house, when a leopard emerged from the tea bushes and pounced. The child was dragged away in full view of the mother.
“The family raised an alarm, and local workers alerted the nearest forest office. There was an intense overnight search operation that spanned nearly two square kilometres, involving 40 forest personnel, a sniffer dog named Bairava, drone surveillance, and help from local fire and police departments. But there was no sign of the girl until late Friday night,” said a forest range officer who was part of the team.
By 11.30 am on Saturday, Roshini’s partially eaten body was discovered 700 meters from her home in a eucalyptus grove. The remains were taken to the Valparai Government Hospital for post-mortem.
Officials said the department has been preparing to place 20 camera traps to monitor the animal movements in the area by Saturday evening. Roshini’s family will receive Rs 50,000 as immediate compensation, with an additional Rs 9.5 lakh expected to be disbursed on Sunday under Tamil Nadu’s human-wildlife conflict relief provisions.
Official sources said that no bloodstains were initially found at the site due to light drizzle at the time of the attack, complicating the tracking. A local estate worker claimed to have seen the leopard dragging the child, but the dense terrain and presence of other wildlife made the operation especially challenging.
The estate has a number of migrant labourers and their families living there. Many have only recently relocated to Valparai for seasonal work. The official said they have started awareness campaigns and urged families not to allow young children outdoors unaccompanied, especially during early morning and evening hours.