Kamla Devi,
56, says she battled with the animal for half an hour after it attacked her
while she was tending her fields
theguardian.com,
Agence France-Presse in Dehradun, Wednesday 27 August 2014
Kamla Devi suffered several injuries after she fought off a leopard. Photograph: Europics |
A
56-year-old Indian woman is recovering in hospital after killing a leopard that
attacked her, as she tended her fields armed only with a sickle.
The woman
told Indian broadcaster CNN-IBN that she battled with the leopard for half an
hour on Sunday morning before finally delivering a killer blow with her sickle.
"The
leopard lunged at me many times and we fought for a long time," she told
the channel from her hospital bed in the northern state of Uttarakhand, her
arms bandaged and a big scar across her right cheek.
"I got
hold of my sickle and fought with it. That's when the leopard was killed,"
said the woman, named as Kamla Devi.
Devi, who
was widowed a few years ago, told the Hindustan Times she was terrified when
the leopard attacked, but was determined not to succumb.
"I
gathered my courage to fight back. I promised myself that this is not my last
day here," she told the paper.
She told
AFP that she grabbed the ear of the attacking leopard with her right hand and
kept swinging at the animal with the sickle in her left. Hearing Devi's screams
for help, villagers in the Rudraprayag district came running but the leopard
was dead by the time they reached her, a witness, Jagdish Singh, said.
Dr Rakesh
Rawat said Devi's injuries, which include fractured hands and deep cuts on her
body, were not life threatening and she was recovering.
Leopard
attacks are relatively common in rural areas of India, although it is rare for
the leopard to come off worse. In 2009 a nine-year-old boy in the same state
fought off a leopard that had attacked his sister.
The animals
are increasingly venturing into populated areas as their habitat becomes
depleted. Video footage from Mumbai last year showed a leopard creeping into an apartment block complex and snatching a small dog.
Conservation
group WWF called for better management of forests and other habitats for
India's leopard population, which numbered 1,150 in a 2011 census.
No comments:
Post a Comment