Summary:
He took up the gun after 12 children and an elderly lady in his area were killed by a man-eater leopard in 2002. “I had to put down a total of 12 big cats across the state which were declared to be destroyed by the state forest department after they became a threat to people.” There is no good or bad in this, it’s my job to save people,” a nonchalant Rawat told TOI.Incidentally, when he is not tracking big cats, the 48-year-old is a teacher in a government school in Chamoli district. Subsequently, the state forest department declared the animal a man-eater and Rawat (who has been a hunter for the past 16 years) was given the job of tracking and killing the big cat. “I remembered the half-eaten body of the child and this kept me going till I traced the leopard..