In a tragic incident, a six-year-old girl, identified as Sushmita alias Rakshita, was killed by a leopard near Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy temple at the Alipiri-Tirumala footpath. The body of the girl, who went missing on Friday night, was found in the early hours of Saturday.
Sushmita along with her parents — Dinesh Kumar and Sasikala — who belong to Pothireddypalem of Kovuru in Nellore district — left for Tirumala on foot for darshan of Lord Venkateswara.
Around 7 p.m., she was found missing and her parents started searching for her. When they could not find her, they lodged a complaint with the police when they reached Tirumala. An announcement was made on the public address system, with the hope that someone might find the girl and bring her to the parents.
However, since it was night, it was not possible to carry out a search operation. A search was carried out in the early hours of Saturday, and TTD vigilance and police officials found blood stains on the ground at the 7th mile on the footpath to Tirumala.
Later, they found the girl’s half-eaten body. They shifted the body to SVR Ruia Government General Hospital for postmortem. On being alerted, the parents of the girl rushed to the hospital and broke down.A month ago, a five-year-old boy was also attacked by a leopard at the Tirumala temple.
