A criminal court here has sentenced a man to three years in jail after he was found guilty of stealing a pair of what apparently were pet leopard cubs from a home. An associate of the convict who was accused by the prosecution of being an accomplice in the crime was acquitted as the court said no evidence was found against him. The leopard cubs were kept in a room adjacent to the living room (majlis) in the owner’s home. It so happened that there were festivities in the owner’s spacious house on the night of the incident and some 100 people had gathered there, a quarter of them singers and musicians. The convict was one of the invitees to the revelries and he took along a friend. The partying went on until midnight. To his shock, the owner discovered the next morning that his baby leopards were missing from their room, which had three doors, two of which were locked, with the third one having no lock on it. A police complaint about the theft was lodged on the owner’s behalf. The police got a clue when a local website mentioned that a leopard had been taken by someone to a veterinary clinic for vaccination. Sleuths from the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ministry of Interior went on the trail of the thieves. Detectives eventually zeroed in on the culprits and arrested them. It was discovered during investigations that one of the stolen leopard cubs had been sold for QR34,000 and the buyer had tried to resell it for QR45,000. The buyer had bought the leopard after he came to know of the offer through an advertisement placed through a BlackBerry message. The duo was charged with trespassing into a private party and stealing the leopard cubs, Al Sharq reported yesterday. Source : Qatar Chronicle

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