The maneater attacks as usual are on a terrific spike in Uttarakhand with no signs of this horrible trend receding to provide relief to the inhabitants of Uttarakhand villages, especially the most vulnerable sections viz senior citizens, children and the women, working in agricultural fields or those cutting grass or fodder for the pet animals, this being their daily routine.
Though human n carnivores’ interactions have been an old story since ages with maneaters killing hundreds n hundreds of people in Uttarakhand n hunters killing the maneaters, – the pre independence era maneater of Rudraprayag and several others, are still fresh in the minds of people who had brutally killed more than about hundred people, compelling the then pupular hunter of the Uttarakhand hills, who later on became the conservative of tiger n leopards’, Jim Corbett killing them ( Rudraprayag maneater n other predators) providing immence relief to the badly horrified inhabitants of the himalayan state.
Not a single day is left when news about the maneaters, brutally killing humans in different parts of Uttarakhand do not appear in the vernacular media.
Though, being a journalist, writing on the maneater kills of humans, I haven’t received any concrete feedback about the definite number of human mortalities in various parts of Uttarakhand from government records, but I can authoritatively say that not a day is left when we don’t hear about the brutal maneater attacked human casualities n incidents of grievous human injuries in this Himalayan state.
The situation in Utarakhand has now reached to such a pass that the carnivores are entering homes, dragging children to jungles n brutally killing them, women are being attacked in agricultural fields n old men the unpredictable targets in jungles n roadsides.
The forest n wild life department officials are rarely to be seen countering this horrific danger to human lives except being mute spectators, coming on the scene after brutal human fatalities.
Just yesterday, on 28 th October, after several brutal kills durung the last two months by man eaters, a sixty year old man again got brutally killed in a maneater attack in in the Keladhar Malla village of Dhumakot, Garhwal Uttarakhand.
According to the village head of Simli Satyendra Singh, a sixty year old Dheeraj Singh had gone to his farm at eight in the morning
When he didn’t come for lunch at twelve in the afternoon as usual, the worried family members went to the farm but he wasn’t there. The tense family members alongwith the neighbours went in his search.
They were shell shocked when after deep search they found the badly mutilated dead body of Dheeraj Singh entagled in bushes about 500 metres away from the field where he was working.
The anguished n terrified villagers are badly infuriated n angered n have demanded the cages to be fixed to capture the freely roaming maneater in Dhumakot.
The forest officer Shankaranand Bhatt has assured the villagers to fix the cages to capture the maneater. Dheeraj Singh’s dead body was sent for postmortem.
It may be recalled that just in a short span of two months two maneaters had been killed by government hired hunters in Pauri Garhwal n Pithoragarh after regular complaints of human kills especially women n children.
