A leopard likely killed at least four cheetah cubs born just a month ago in central India’s Kuno National Park, officials said on Tuesday.

Their deaths mark the latest setback to India’s ambitious Cheetah reintroduction project, started four years ago by importing the big cats from Africa. India had declared the Asiatic cheetah extinct in 1952.

Park officials said partially-eaten bodies of the cubs were found by a monitoring team early on Tuesday, confirming that they were killed by another animal.

“At around 6.30am, the four cubs of female cheetah KGP12 which were born on 11 April in the wild were found dead by the monitoring team near the den site in Sheopur Territorial Division,” the field director of Project Cheetah, Uttam Sharma, said.

The cubs were last seen alive on the evening of 11 April and were under constant observation, he told The Independent.

The corpses were partially eaten and bore deep wounds, suggesting they were attacked by a leopard.

“Prima facie, the incident appears to be predation by another animal. The mother cheetah is safe and healthy,” park officials said in a statement.

The Kuno National Park is home to a large population of apex predators like leopards, wolves, hyenas, and wild dogs, which had been flagged as a major threat to the incoming African cheetahs, donated to India by South Africa and Namibia.

Project Cheetah suffered a slow start as several of the animals died within the first two years due to territorial threats, sickness, dehydration, and maggot-infestation from wet monitor collars. In all, 22 cheetahs have died since the reintroduction programme began in September 2022.

In that time, however, multiple cheetahs, imported from Africa and their offspring born in India, have given birth.

India now has a total of 53 cheetahs, all but three in Kuno, where officials had celebrated the birth of the cubs found dead on Tuesday as a “baby boom”.

The previous death of a cheetah cub was reported in December, when a 20-month-old from the park was killed after being hit by a vehicle on a nearby highway.