MEERUT, India (From The Times of India) -- Saharanpur based Star Paper Mills employees had the shock of their lives Wednesday when they entered the premises of the mill and found a leopard stealthily moving around. Panic spread and before anyone could react, the cat injured one.

Soon the premises were evacuated. Throughout the day, the police and forest officials kept trying to locate the leopard but with little success. Interestingly, until evening, the forest officials grappled with the situation without definite strategy to counter the crisis.

Even they were not equipped with the necessary tranquillizers which had to be ordered from Dehradun. The tranquillizing team, however, reached Saharanpur only in the evening.

Divisional Forest Officer of Saharanpur, Vijay Singh, said, "We do have tranquillizer gun but it requires a huge amount of expertise when it comes to deciding dosage. So we called a team from Wildlife Institute of India based at Dehradun that arrived in the evening. Meanwhile we have set up cages to lure the animal."

As per the local sources, the leopard was spotted at 6:00 a.m. for the first time. However, since not many people saw it, the sighting was brushed off as a rumour. Three hours later, the cat entered one of the workshops and allegedly injured a worker Shiv Kumar.

Soon after, the panic struck and people began to run outside.

While speaking to TOI, forest conservator of Saharanpur division, Sunil Chaudhary, said, "By pug marks one thing can be stated with certainty that it is a leopard. And, there is high probability that it moved along the river Hindon stream that flows near the mill. It could have entered the mill from the forest side. However, we cannot say with certainty that it is still in the premises but as a precautionary measure our teams along with police guard are conducting combing operations every six hours and it will continue until we are sure that the beast has left."

However, uncertainty continued to hound 50 odd families that reside within the mill premises. Amit Nagar, circle officer (IInd) of the police department said, "We have secured the area where the families are residing and directions have been issued to the management of the mill to keep the mill shut for a couple of days until all possibilities of the leopard's presence are over. Meanwhile, efforts are on to confine the animal in a localized area."