Madhya Pradesh / Unarmed tribal woman fights off leopard, snatches her son from its jaw in MP

BHOPAL: A tribal woman took on a leopard with her bare hands and snatched her sixyear-old son from its jaws in a bloody fight in a village near Sanjay Gandhi National Park in MP’s Sidhi district on Sunday evening.

The Baiga woman chased the leopard and caught up with it just when it sat down with its ‘prey’, say sources. She came out of the fight injured, but with the child in her arms. The boy also has deep claw and fang wounds, but scars — and the memory of his unarmed mother wrestling a leopard — are all that will remain.

Kiran, the feisty mother, lives in Badi Jhiriya village in the buffer zone of the national park. On Sunday evening, she was sitting next to a fire outside her hut, waiting for her husband to return, unaware that a leopard was watching them. Her children were close by — the youngest, a few months old, was in her lap. Six-year-old Rahul, and two other siblings, sat next to her. The leopard seems to have fixed on Rahul as its target.

In a flash, it darted out of the shadows, caught Rahul in its jaws, and ran off. Kiran was up in a flash, too. She handed the newborn to one of her other children, ordered them inside the hut, and sprinted after the leopard.

Even in the darkness, she kept up with the spotted cat and found it sitting in some bushes, its paws resting on a terrified Rahul. Kiran says she lunged at the leopard, grabbed her child and pulled with all her strength. The predator seemed taken by surprise, and she could tear Rahul from its grasp.