New Delhi, Apr 26 (PTI) There was no foul play behind the death of South African cheetah 'Uday', official sources said on Wednesday.

They said the cheetah died due to acute cardio pulmonary failure.

Also Read | Operation Kaveri: 360 Indians Leave Jeddah on New Delhi-Bound Flight, Says EAM S Jaishankar.

"Pathological lesions in lungs and heart of the cheetah was also found," one of the sources said.

The source further said that they are suspecting exertion that the cheetah experienced after hunting a deer to be one of the causes for triggering the cardio pulmonary failure.

Also Read | Uttar Pradesh: Woman Who Had Eloped With Boyfriend's Father in Kanpur, Traced and Brought Back From Delhi.

'Uday', aged six years, was the second cheetah to die in the Kuno National Park (KNP), after a female cheetah, 'Sasha', aged more than four-and-a-half-years, died of a kidney ailment on March 27. The two fatalities brought down the number of translocated felines in the national park to 18.

The source said that no foul play was found in the postmortem of cheetah 'Uday'.

The source further said that there is stringent monitoring taking place in KNP.

An official release on Sunday said KNP officials found cheetah 'Uday' sluggish in his enclosure and a closer inspection revealed he was staggering.

The cheetah was treated under the monitoring of wildlife vets and kept in the isolation ward but he died, the release had said.

The deceased cheetah was one of the 12 felines translocated to KNP in Sheopur district from South Africa in February this year, five months after eight Namibian cheetahs were shifted to the facility under the ambitious 'Project Cheetah'.

This project to reintroduce cheetahs in India was launched last September, decades after the species became extinct in the country.

The country's last cheetah died in Koriya district of present-day Chhattisgarh in 1947 and the species was declared extinct in 1952.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)