India, Aug. 24 -- It is with more than a modicum of despair that we must temper the news of a sensational discovery. An adult specimen of the Fishing cat (FC) was rescued from the Ambala-Haridwar highway near Mullana on Friday morning at around 5.15 am. The cat had been hit by a vehicle and was paralysed.

The specimen was rescued by the Haryana wildlife department and the NGO, Vande Matram Dal, after a call was placed to the police emergency helpline 112 by a passerby. The road-hit cat constituted the first record of the FC for Haryana. There are, otherwise, no records of this species from Himachal Pradesh and Jammu Kashmir & Ladakh, and just the bare minimum from Punjab. The species has been declared as "vulnerable" by the IUCN.

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