Bahraich: Sheela Devi last saw her eight-year-old son in the jaws of a wolf. It was in the dead of the night. Within seconds, the animal disappeared into the sugarcane fields outside their house and Kishan was gone. The child couldn’t even scream as the wolf had firmly dug its teeth into his neck. His body was found around 5 am that morning.
“It was around 1:30 am. We were all fast asleep, my third son was lying on the charpoy on the extreme end of the room towards the left. I heard no screams, no noise but only a sudden thud as the wolf pounced my son to the ground, grabbing him by the neck. I saw him only when he was dragging Kishan off the ground,” said Sheela.
The Kolaila village of Mahsi tehsil in Uttar Pradesh’s Bahraich has already seen four attacks by wolves gone wild who are known to habituate the floodplains of the Ghaghara river. In the past six months as many as 10 people, including eight children and a woman, have died in Bahraich while at least 15 have been injured in these animal attacks.
Now, men of Kolaila village, armed with lathis and sharp-edged sticks, stay up all night to guard families. And the night’s silence is broken with bomb blasts to scare away the animal. Few even make announcements from loudspeaker-mounted autorickshaws, alerting the villagers to remain awake and ensure their children sleep indoors. Thermal cameras, drones, nets and iron cages aid the forest department teams, which work through the night, anxiously waiting to catch the remaining wolves. But the wild animals have now changed their course. Rampant floods in parts of the district that are surrounded by wildlife on two sides have meant the wolves’ habitat has shifted closer to the human settlement, an issue experts say needs special attention.
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Catch them before the next kill
The wolf attacks were reported as early as March this year. But the administration didn’t move till July when their frequency went up. The first death was reported on 10 March when a three-year-old girl from Mishranpurwa village was killed. On 23 March, a one-year-old boy from Nayapurwa village of the Mahsi tehsil was killed.
Villagers of Bathauli allege that some forest officials remained dismissive of their complaints till as late as 14 August when a wolf picked up five-year-old Khushboo from the Bathauli village before mutilating her body.
Khushboo’s uncle Kishan said that officials did not believe the wolf story and claimed it was the handwork of a human being.
The forest department caught the first wild wolf only on 3 August. The animal died in custody. Subsequently, two more wolves were caught on 8 and 18 August, respectively. The fourth wolf was caught on 29 August.
“It is a pack of six wolves, from what we know so far. We have caught four of them. As far as our information tells, there are only two of them left,” Bahraich’s district forest officer (DFO) Ajit Pratap Singh said.
Over 400 officials including 25 teams from the forest, panchayati raj, prantiye rakshak dal (PRD), revenue, village development and agriculture department along with jawans of the provincial armed constabulary (PAC), UP police and panchayat sahayaks have been manning different duty points across the 40 villages of the tehsil gripped by fear.
On Friday, one of the two remaining man-eater wolves escaped the forest department’s cage near a pond.
“One of them was captured by a drone camera on Thursday. We laid a trap near a pond in Kokaila hamlet where a cage was put up but he seemed to have changed his area. They have become alert now,” said Vimal Tiwari, who works with the forest department.
On Saturday, the cage was put up in a swathe of land near the Ghaghara.
Dolls immersed in children’s urine have been put up inside the cages to lure the wolves.
“Wolves have an exceptional sense of smell. The idea is to entice them,” Tiwari said.
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A pack of wolves, or just one?
Nearly six months after the first attack was reported, forest department officials and wildlife experts differ on the number of man-eating wolves on the prowl in the area.
Additional chief secretary, environment, forest and climate change Manoj Singh said that multiple deaths suggest more than one wolf is involved.
“The killings of the small children are definitely the work of a wolf. Wolves can prey on children when they are in isolation. The propensity with which the attacks have happened suggests that there may be more than one wolf going for a kill. We have punctured their killing power. We hope to catch the remaining wolves in the next two to three days,” he said.
Bahraich deputy ranger Deepak Singh told ThePrint that drone cameras deployed for surveillance in the area have captured pictures of the wolves roaming around both in a pack and alone.
“The wolves have been moving in a family. It is possible that more than one wolf has been attacking the villagers but the possibility of a single wolf attacking children and then helping his family feed cannot be ruled out either,” he said.
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Turning into a maneater
Studying the pictures of the dead bodies of the children who have been attacked in Mahsi, YV Jhala, veteran wildlife scientist and former dean at the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) said the nature of attacks suggests it’s the job of a predator that has recently turned into a man-eater.
“When wolves make a kill and eat the prey together, they tend to tear off the portions of the dead body and scatter them over an area. Since dead bodies have mostly been found in a single place with no body parts scattered, it suggests that it could be one single wolf targeting humans. However, a DNA analysis of the faeces of the animals can confirm which of these wolves is behind the killings. If the DNA matches human DNA, that would confirm which wolf or wolves have turned man-eater,” he said.
Jhala said the attacks reminded him of similar attacks that took place in 1996 when a spate of children were reported to have been killed in the Pratapgarh, Jaunpur and Sultanpur districts. While villagers had blamed a manai (werewolf) for the attacks, experts later attributed them to wild animals.
As part of the Wolf Research Project at the WII, Jhala and fellow researcher Dinesh Kumar Sharma had earlier conducted a short study on the lethal attacks on as many as 76 children.
“Back then too, such attacks had increased in the monsoons. That is also the time when a progenitor animal is searching for flesh for the family. Wolves are shy and are naturally afraid of a human being but if a wolf does attack a human, it is simply because the predatory animal is short of prey and is possibly starving,” he said.
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Man versus wolf conflict
Located in the northeastern part of UP, the Bahraich district shares a long boundary with neighbouring Nepal. The Ghaghara river passes through the district towards the west.
The Katarnia Ghat wildlife sanctuary, which falls in the Terai region of Bahraich and the upper Gangetic plain is at a distance of about 100 km from Mahsi tehsil while the Dudhwa National Park is at a distance of about 117 km from here.
Several of the Mahsi villages, which have been affected by the wolf attacks are either located in the floodplains of the Ghaghara or have the Ghaghara passing through them.
Forest department officials say that with the area witnessing rampant floods this year, the natural habitat of the wolves and their prey has been altered.
“The wolves’ natural habitat happens to be in the highlands in the Ghaghara floodplains which is about seven-eight kilometres from Aurahi village. Due to excessive flooding, water gets filled in drains, ponds, etc that they (the wolves) are known to habituate. Their prey, including the burrowing animals, are either dead or move toward villages with human settlements. Villages provide them with food, water, shelter and cover,” said Bahraich’s divisional forest officer (DFO) Ajit Pratap Singh.
Wolves living near villages usually prey on goats and sheep reared by the villagers. And when it becomes difficult to get any of that, humans become their targets, added Singh.
Several villagers in Mahsi have reported goats and sheep being lifted by wolves over the past two months.
“Wolves prey on goats or sheep but if a child is sitting near the cattle, they may mistake him/her for its natural prey. Humans are not wolves’ natural prey but at times, they fail to differentiate. And once they have eaten a human, it is possible that they may go on a killing spree. Moreover, goats are mostly tied with a rope, which they have to bite off, a sleeping child is most vulnerable,” he said.
The Indian wolf is a highly endangered species with merely 2,000 of them left in the entire country. They are mostly found in parts of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka. UP has a very small population.
“Growing human population and declining habitats, have led to wolves’ prey animals such as hare, gazelles, etc vanishing from this region. With no prey left, wolves would tend to find alternatives. They adapt to the circumstances and find other prey,” said Singh.
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Preying in the dark
What also makes villagers an easy target for wolves is their economic status and poor living conditions. And small children are more vulnerable than even the livestock. Mahsi tehsil lacks electrification.
“Since the area is dominated by communities that are largely marginalised and exploited over ages, rearing goat and sheep is a major source of income. The animals are often guarded while the children are often left unattended,” said Jhala.
Mahesh Rangarajan, Professor of environmental history at the Ashoka University said the compensation scheme for loss of livestock to tigers should be extended with suitable modification to cover wolf attacks.
“Most of the wolf population lives outside protected areas, while the case is opposite with the tigers. At the same time, all due steps need to be taken to protect human life,” he said.
In Kolaila, villagers blame the lack of proper lighting that makes their children vulnerable.
“We have no tube lights here. After Kishan’s death, the local MLA got some halogen lights installed. Most earning males of the families reside in other states or districts for work and the mothers take care of the children alone. At times, they lie on cots unattended,” said octogenarian Prasadi Gautam, adding the last time he heard of wolves attacking humans was in his childhood.
Pointing at the newly installed doors in Sheela’s house, Gautam said several houses can’t afford such doors.
The surroundings of Sheela’s house are now well-lit.
“The lights have been put up after the wolf killed my son. Wolves attack in the night and no lights make it easier for them to attack children. I hope nobody loses their children like I did,” she said.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)