Police seized 17 kilos (37 pounds) of leopard meat from the three suspects (Representation)
Colombia, Sri Lanka:
Sri Lankan police on Friday arrested three people on suspicion of setting up and killing an endangered leopard and trying to sell its meat as an asthma cure.
The trio were arrested after police raided their home after learning they had used a trap to catch the creature in the central highlands.
“They cut off the head and killed the animal after it was trapped on Thursday,” Chief Inspector Dushantha Kangara told AFP by telephone.
He said the suspects threw the leopard’s head into the forest and removed the carcass to sell the animal’s skin, meat and other body parts.
Several leopards have been trapped by snares in the area, some 175 kilometers (110 miles) east of Colombo.
Kangara said there was a popular belief that leopard meat could cure asthma.
Police seized 17 kilograms (37 pounds) of leopard meat from the three suspects.
It is believed that there are less than 1,000 leopards in the wild in Sri Lanka, and injuring the big cat carries a sentence of up to five years in prison.
Wildlife conservators have called on authorities to ban snares and prosecute those who use them.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
