A video of a leopard appearing to be casually sitting on the side of a road is doing rounds on social media. It is being claimed that this leopard was seen sitting on the Bangalore Bannerghatta Outer Ring Road. Let’s verify this claim through this article.
Claim: Visuals of a leopard sighting filmed on the Outer Ring Road, Bangalore.
Fact: Reportedly, on 16 April 2023, a leopard was seen sitting on a road (NH 67) near Binkadakatti, a village in the Gadag district of Karnataka. Binkadakatti is approximately 420 Km away from Bangalore. Hence the claim made in the post is False.
To know more details about the video, we performed a basic keyword search on the internet. This led us to a news report published by the Times Now on 17 April 2023, which contained the viral video.
This incident happened last Sunday night (16 April 2023) on the Gadag Binkadakatti road, NH 67. A few more news reports (here and here) on the same incident also mentioned that this happened near Binkadakatti, a village in the Gadag district of Karnataka. Hubli Express reported that the forest department had launched an operation to catch the big cat but to no avail.
According to Google Maps, the distance between Binkadakatti and Bangalore is approximately 420km, which clearly means the viral post falsely describes the location of this incident as Bangalore Outer Ring Road.
To sum up, a video of a leopard spotted sitting on the Gadag Binkadakatti road is shared as a leopard sighting captured in Bangalore.
