An Indian mom fought off a tiger with her bare hands to save her toddler son from its jaws, an official announced on Wednesday, September 7.
Archana Choudhary stepped out of her home in the central state of Madhya Pradesh on Sunday evening as her 15-month-old boy wanted to relieve himself. Local official Sanjeev Shrivastava told AFP that a tiger believed to have strayed from the nearby Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve suddenly pounced on them.
He said the tiger attacked and tried to sink its teeth into the kid's head, but the mother leaped to the boy's rescue. The tiger kept trying to snatch the child until villagers heard the mom's screams and rushed to their rescue.
Mom suffered punctured lungs, wounds in her abdomen
With reinforcements on the way, the tiger escaped into the forest. Shrivastava said the mother had been admitted to the hospital, and she is now out of danger and recovering. He added that the baby is also doing fine.
The mom suffered punctured lungs and wounds to her abdomen in the tiger attack, while the young boy had deep gashes on his head. According to civil surgeon Dr. Misthi Ruhela in the city of Jabalpur, the mom and child were being treated in the intensive care unit (ICU), and both had been given anti-rabies injections.
According to The Times of India, a search operation has been launched to push the wild animal back to its territory. Villagers had also been told to stay indoors at night while the tiger was still at large.
Last month, it was reported that a tiger killed a man in front of his wife and neighbor in the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve. As more forestland is lost to urban expansion, conflicts between humans and animals have been rising across South Asia.
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Tiger attacks rising in India
According to figures from the Indian government, nearly 225 people were killed by tigers between 2014 and 2019, while data showed that more than 200 tigers were killed by poachers or through electrocution between 2012 and 2018.
A controversial hunter killed a female tiger blamed for over a dozen fatal attacks in the subcontinent in 2018. The tiger population was estimated to be at 2,967 back in 2018.
India announced in 2019 that the number of wild tigers had increased 33 percent in four years despite the rise in human conflict. However, animal attacks on people living around the said tiger reserve are not uncommon. Villagers told BBC Hindi that elephants have also been entering their villages in the past months apart from tigers and are damaging their crops.
According to experts, this is not a complete surprise as rapid urbanization is destroying the animals' natural habitats, forcing them to enter towns and villages in search of shelter and prey.
