New Delhi — One of the wolves from a pack that has killed eight people in a forested district of north India was caught Thursday, officials said. The victims, seven children and a woman, were killed by the wolves over the past six weeks in the Bahraich district of India’s Uttar Pradesh state.
Thousands of people in dozens of villages in the district have spent sleepless nights since the first attack on July 17, when a one-year-old boy was killed by the wolves in Sikandarpur village. The second attack a week later saw the wolves snatch a three-year-old girl from a courtyard where she was sleeping at night. Her badly mutilated remains were discovered in a nearby field, spreading a wave of terror across the district.
Six more people were killed in similar attacks over the next few weeks, with the wolves sneaking into the yards of people who were sleeping outside their homes. It’s common in rural India for people to sleep outdoors to beat the summer heat.
An infant was killed in the latest attack Tuesday night.
Anwar Attar/iStock/Getty
On Thursday, officials with the Uttar Pradesh forestry department said they had captured one of the wolves from the pack of six. The animal was tranquilized and then sent to a zoo. Three others were captured earlier, but two remain on the loose, according to the officials.
“On the basis of pugmarks (pawprints), drone footage, we came to know that there were around six stray wolves, and hence we installed the traps accordingly,” Vineet Singh, Divisional Forest Officer for the Bahraich district, told reporters Thursday.
He said the first wolf was captured on Aug. 19 and the latest on Thursday in the Mahsi area of the district. The forestry department deployed 16 teams of experts who were using technologies including thermal cameras and drones to track the remaining wolves.
They have also burned elephant dung to create smoke and spread elephant urine in a bid to create a natural scent barrier to keep the wolves within a targeted area. The illusion of elephants created by the smells has helped officials contain the wolves in an area where the traps have been set, as wolves tend to avoid large animals like elephants, senior Forest Department officer Akash Deep Badhawan explained.
State authorities have warned people against sleeping out in the open or moving around at night alone, but some houses in the area don’t even have doors and many lack indoor toilets, so residents have little option but to go out to relieve themselves in the night, according to a report by one Indian news outlet.
While attacks by big cats and elephants are not rare in India, wolf attacks are unusual. More than 300 people were killed in tiger attacks in the country between 2018 and 2022, according to the latest available government data.
Experts say the expansion of towns and villages into wilderness areas, reducing the natural habitats and hunting grounds of many species, is a major factor behind the increasing people-animal encounters.
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