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Kuno cheetah cub found injured in Morena forest, 100 km from the park; cause unknown, injury clear in 48 hours
A 19-month-old male cheetah, a cub of Nirva, was found with a back injury in Morena forest on Sunday evening, about 100 km from Kuno National Park. It was darted, taken to the park's medical facility and is under treatment. The cause is not known; activists allege poachers.
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A 19-month-old male cheetah from Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh has been found injured in a forest in the neighbouring Morena district, and it is being treated at the park's medical facility. The animal is a cub of the female cheetah Nirva. A cheetah monitoring team found it with a back injury on the evening of Sunday, 25 October. The cause of the injury has not been established, and a forest officer has said that the nature of the injury may not be known for 48 hours.
How it was found
The cheetah had strayed about 100 km from the park into the Pahargarh range of the Morena Territorial Forest Division. The monitoring team that follows the animals by radio collar located it on Sunday evening. A rescue team reached the spot late that night and darted the animal to immobilise it, so that it could be given a preliminary health check, and then moved it to the medical facility of the park.
A press note from the Cheetah Project Director, Uttam Kumar Sharma, says that the cheetah is undergoing treatment for the injuries. No details have been given on the severity of the injury or on the animal's prognosis. The statement from the forest officer says the cause of injury is yet to be ascertained, and that an investigation is under way in which all possible angles are being examined.
The allegations
Local wildlife activists have alleged that the cheetah was injured by poachers. There is also talk, from sources who asked not to be named, that villagers had attacked the injured animal. One report says that the animal was beaten with sticks and that the field director denied reports that it had died. The reports do not agree about where the injury occurred, and none of the claims has been confirmed by the authorities. For the time being, the forest department's position is that the cause is not known.
The incident came only hours after two cheetahs from the park killed a calf in Bomra village, which lies in the buffer zone of the park, early on Saturday. The two events show the difficulty of the project's free-ranging phase, in which cheetahs leave the protected area and come near villages, where they meet people and livestock.
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Of the 53 cheetahs that the park houses, 15 are in the free range, which means that they are outside the enclosures. The programme has been running since the first cheetahs were brought from Namibia in 2022 and later from South Africa, and the animals born in India, such as this cub, are the part of the population that officials describe as the future of the project.
Earlier this year, in June 2026, a female cheetah known as KGP-11 was found injured in the same area, in the Pahargarh range, and died during treatment. The reports do not say whether the present case is linked to that one, and the earlier incident is a reason for the concern that follows each new injury.
Wildlife veterinarians say that a back injury in a big cat can range from a bruise to a damaged spine, and it takes imaging and observation to tell which it is. The wait of 48 hours is typical for such a case, since swelling and neurological signs take time to show. The darting itself carries a risk, and the animal has to be monitored for its response to sedatives and to treatment.
The outcome will affect how the authorities respond. If the injury was caused by a person, the forest department will have to take legal action under the wildlife protection law, which gives cheetahs the same protection as other animals listed in its first schedule. If it was caused by another animal or an accident, the question will be about the habitat and the dispersal of animals.
Conservationists have pointed out for some time that the project needs a larger landscape than Kuno and the villages around it, and that the people who live there have to be partners. Compensation for livestock killed by cheetahs, awareness programmes and a quick response by monitoring teams are part of that. The rescue of the cub in about a night is an example of how the system is meant to work, and the investigation will show whether it also protects the animals from harm by people.
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