The Distance Between the Attack and the Cheque
When a leopard takes a goat from a village bordering Corbett or Pench, the family has 24 to 48 hours to report it to the forest department. Miss that window and the claim is void before it starts. The animal is gone, the carcass may be scattered, and the household is already calculating the loss in rupees they do not have. The first failure point is not corruption or indifference, it is geography. Many forest-fringe villages in Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra sit hours from the nearest range office. A family that cannot reach a forest guard in time loses the claim on a procedural technicality.
