Kolhe said if the government does not take concrete action, then the villagers will take their agitation to the CM's bungalow in MumbaiShirur MP Amol Kolhe, who led the rasta roko of locals protesting against the death of a 13-year-old boy in a leopard attack in Shirur taluka of Pune district, on Monday said the boy’s family will not cremate him until and unless the leopard is shot down. The district administration said it has already issued shoot-on-sight orders for the leopard.Speaking to reporters in Shirur, Kolhe said, ”We have been told that the Forest Minister has organised a meeting in this regard tomorrow (Tuesday). What is regrettable is that no top official has been invited. We demand that the Forest Minister himself comes here and sees the situation. Only after that should he hold a meeting as there is a vast gap between the briefing from officials and the situation on ground.”Stating that leopards have claimed 56 lives in the last few years, the Shirur MP said leopards should be removed from Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, that provides absolute protection to the species and imposes the harshest penalties for violations, such as hunting or trading them. “If leopards are not removed from Schedule I, …they should be either re-located or shot down,” he said.Kolhe said there are over 1,000-1,200 leopards in four talukas of Khed, Ambegaon, Junnar and Shirur of Pune district. “If we consider 400 are females and each of them gives births to four, then you can imagine the rate at which the leopard population will grow. Therefore, it is necessary to take strong action in the matter.”The NCP (S-P) leader said the family of the boy—killed in the leopard attack—has decided not to cremate him till they are given justice. Kolhe said villagers have been trying to get in touch with Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar but he has remained out of bounds. ”The villagers have no clue as to what happened to the instructions given by Ajit Pawar in his last meeting regarding the leopard menace. Ajit Pawar should look into this matter seriously,” he said.Urging the government to make the leopard menace part of the state disaster plan besides carrying out their vasectomies, the MP said, ”If this is done, the forest department will get necessary infrastructure and manpower equired to tackle the problem.”Kolhe said if the government does not take concrete action, then the villagers will take their agitation to the CM’s bungalow in Mumbai.Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read MoreClick here to join Express Pune WhatsApp channel and get a curated list of our stories© The Indian Express Pvt LtdTags:leopard attack