A pack of wolves has unleashed terror among villagers in northern India with the animals emerging from tall sugarcane grasses at night and pulling away children sleeping out in the open during the humid monsoon season.
At least 10 children have been killed by a single pack in Bahraich in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, marking the latest human-animal conflict that experts say has its roots in factors including loss of habitat and the climate crisis.
Forestry officials told The Independent that a sense of nightly terror is palpable in around 100 villages where the pack has been roaming, as children are picked off and their mutilated bodies are found hours later.
More than 35 villages, mired in rural poverty, offer little to no protection for these children who sleep in doorless, thatchedroof houses in the monsoon heat of above 30C.
Stumped by the fast-escalating problem, authorities are struggling to come up with solutions. Their main advice to scared locals has been for parents to keep their children indoors, especially during the night when the pack is most likely to be out hunting.
“We first heard of a child being reported missing on 18 March, but we did not find any pugmarks. In March, we saw a couple of mysterious ‘abductions’ but it was quiet for the next three months. On 17 July, the horror repeated with another child being attacked,” Ajeet Singh, the district forest official of Bahraich, said.
“We realised that these wolves have developed a taste for human flesh and that we are in deep trouble,” he said.
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