Jaigaon, March 12: Two leopards have been caught in Bhagatpur tea garden in a week, the last one caged in the early hours today.

A six-year-old female leopard was captured from Section 19 of Bhagatpur in Nagrakata around two in the night after a goat was kept in the cage as bait. From the same spot, another big cat had been caged last Friday in a similar fashion.

Earlier on May 6, a leopard, that too was a female, had been captured by the foresters, from the same garden.

In Moinaguri’s Jadavpur tea garden, a leopard cub was spotted in a bush at 1pm. The garden is 30km from Bhagatpur.

Residents of Bhagatpur complained that over the year the leopards have devoured cattle and poultry that they have been rearing in their houses. Anjali Lohar, a garden worker, said she used to rear goats for some extra income. “But the leopards had eaten them all. We are living in fear.”

According to Bhagatpur garden manager Abhoy Singh, the foresters, who laid the bait with a goat, took away the leopard this morning.

The divisional forest officer of Jalpaiguri, wildlife II, Tapas Das, said the six-year-old female leopard might have strayed into the garden from the Sibchu-Chapramari forest range, about 2km away.

“We set up cages wherever predators like leopards and tigers raid the human habitation,” Das said.

Both the leopards captured from Bhagatpur have been released in Gorumara National Park, he said.

On the possibility of the presence of more leopards in the garden, as apprehended by the Bhagatpur residents, the DFO said his employees were keeping a close watch on the estate. “If required, we will lay baits again.”

The two-month-old cub rescued from a bush in the Jadavpur garden will be kept at a leopard rescue centre in Gorumara till it grows up, forest ranger Uditnarayan Srivastava said. “Leopards prefer bushes or high drains in the garden for breeding.”