25-year-old woman fights off leopard, saves daughter in Madhya Pradesh

Bhopal: A woman in a Madhya Pradesh village valiantly fought a leopard for nearly half-an-hour to save herself and her infant daughter, officials said on Sunday.

Although the incident took place on Friday evening, it came to light on Sunday when the woman was admitted in the district headquarters hospital at Morena in serious conditions.

According to official reports, 25-year-old Asha was attacked by a leopard when she barely stepped out of her village Bhaisai in Morena district along with her two-year-old daughter on Friday evening.

She was walking in a forested route to go to her parent’s house in the nearby village.

“The leopard pounced on me when I was walking in an agriculture land inside the forest. The big cat’s push threw me on the floor. But, I could manage to get up by firmly holding my daughter in my arm and started running.

The wild animal then tried to snatch my daughter. I then caught it in chokehold. The leopard wounded me with its claws in my arms and shoulders, but I did not loosen my grip over its neck,” she said. The fight went on for about 30 minutes.

“Then, some villagers working in the crop fields nearby spotted me and started attacking the leopard, forcing it to run away,” a local forest officer who visited her in the hospital quoted her as saying.

She suffered deep wounds in her arms and shoulder in the attack by the leopard. She was first admitted at a local primary health centre and then shifted to the district headquarters hospital at Morena.

“We have launched an operation to track down the leopard,” local divisional forest officer A.K. Ansari said.