Black panther wins awards for Calcuttan; ‘Beautiful darkness’ burns bright under stars
Telegraph | 8 March 2025
A Kenyan black panther, whose local name means “beautiful darkness”, was clicked by a Calcuttan in the dead of the night a year ago.
The big cat had just climbed a tree to defend a fresh kill from a leopard, when Rajarshi Banerji clicked her. Under a starry sky, the black panther with shining eyes lived up every bit to her name. The picture looks both stunning and surreal.
Earlier this month, the shot fetched Banerji two awards in the Memorial Maria Luisa, a wildlife photography contest, organised by Fundación Cajastur (Cajastur Foundation) in Spain.
The website bills the contest as a selection of the “best mountain, nature and adventure photos of 2025”. The award has 15 categories. In addition to winning in the Biodiversity category, Banerji’s picture has been awarded the Grand Prix, or chosen as the best among the best of the contest. The awards will be conferred at a ceremony in Oviedo in Spain on May 17.
Banerji, 60, is a seafood exporter by profession. The Hindustan Park resident is the president of the Bengal chapter of the Seafood exporters’ association of India. His passion is wildlife photography, especially during the night.
Black panthers are not a distinct species, but “melanistic” members of the genus Panthera (lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars and snow leopards). In practice, the term black panther applies to leopards and jaguars, as fully black individuals don’t occur in the other species.
Black panthers are extremely rare in Africa. When they were first spotted in Laikipia County, an area north of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, in 2019, it was widely reported.
In February last year, Banerji tracked a black panther or a black leopard in Laikipia for a fortnight.
“Her name is Mrembo Giza, which means ‘beautiful darkness’ in Swahili. On that night, she just had one kill stolen by a big male leopard. She made another kill, a dik-dik (small antelope) but another leopard chased her. She climbed a tree, clinging on to the meal,” Banerji told Metro.
“Luckily for me, this was a tree with an open branch and allowed her to be seen sitting with her kill in the open,” he added.