One night in October, Saluram Kargal was sleeping near his goats outside his home in the village of Wadgaon Borwadi, around 100 km from Pune. The one-room brick home is situated in an enclosure surrounded by an eight-foot-high fence. Suddenly, Kargal’s sleep was broken by the sound of the animals yelping. He opened his eyes and saw a blur of orange near the goats.
It was two leopards.
One swiftly grabbed a 6-kg goat by its neck and jumped out of the enclosure over the fence, then disappeared into the sugarcane fields that surround the house. The second grabbed another goat and also tried to escape, but its paw got stuck in the fence.
Each goat cost between Rs 10,000 and Rs 20,000. Desperate to save at least one of them, Kargal attacked the leopard.
“The leopard dug its teeth into my thigh,” Kargal told Scroll in mid-December. “I screamed and my son ran out with a stick and began to hit it.” The leopard fled, only to return minutes later and attack Kargal again.
The animal bit the 40-year-old farmer on his stomach, hand and left leg, tearing through his flesh. Kargal fell unconscious – his stomach and thigh were bleeding profusely. The leopard next attacked Kargal’s 15-year-old son, Santosh. But...
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