65-year-old strangles jackal with sari in MP, survives attack with 18 bite wounds

Image used for representative purpose only.

Attacked by a jackal, a 65-year-old woman strangled the beast with her sari in Madhya Pradesh’s Shivpuri district. Mauled and left unconscious in the fields after battling it for nearly half an hour, the Dalit woman regained consciousness six hours later in a hospital — with 18 bite wounds on her body.

According to a report by The Times of India, the woman, Surajia Bai Jatav, a widow and small farmer of Barkhadi village, was found unconscious in her field late on Monday. She had gone to her field around 5 pm to cut fodder.

"I thought I was going to die," she was quoted by TOI as saying. Alone and bleeding, she grabbed the jackal's jaws and held it down, even as it kept biting her repeatedly.

After 25 minutes, weak and losing blood, Surajia tore a long strip from her sari, made a loop and slipped it around the jackal's neck. As the animal lunged again, she pulled the cloth tight and held it until the jackal stopped moving. Then, she fell unconscious beside it in the fields.

"We feared the worst until she opened her eyes well past midnight," said a relative. "She is stable, on anti-rabies injections, and should recover in about a week," a doctor at the hospital was quoted by TOI as saying.