A wild animal, suspected to be a jackal or wolf, attacked and injured five members of a family, including a woman, while they were asleep in a village in Khandwa district of Madhya Pradesh.

According to officials, the incident occured in village Malgaon in the tribal dominated Khalwa tehsil of the district at around 2.30 am on Friday.

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Harsud Sub-Divisonal Officer of Police Sandeep Vaskale said the woman suffered injuries on her head and legs while the men got injured in their hands in the attack.

On hearing the screams of the family members, other villagers rushed to the spot. The animal fled away into the forest.

Divisional Forest Officer Rakesh Damor told The Statesman that they did not find any clear pugmarks at the spot; so it was difficult to ascertain whether the animal was a wolf or a jackal.

Damor said the injured were admitted to the government Khandwa Medical College. He said all five were administered anti-rabies injections and provided necessary treatment.

Initially it was being suspected that the animal that attacked the people was a wolf.

However, a video surfaced later, in which some villagers were seen dragging a dead jackal with a rope tied in its neck. It was being claimed that this was the jackal that attacked in the village, but was not confirmed officially.

Damor said whether or not this was the same animal that attacked in the village, a case would be registered and necessary action would be taken against anyone who killed the jackal.

The incident comes at a time when wolf attacks in Bahraich in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh in the past two months have resulted in eight deaths, including seven kids, and left more than three dozen people injured.

The animal attacks in Khandwa and Bahraich have also brought back memories of a pack of four wolves that reportedly killed 17 children in different villages of the Ashta tehsil in the Sehore district of Madhya Pradesh in a span of less than three months between November 1985 and January 1986.

That wolf pack consisted of two adult males, one adult female and one young female. The adult female had two pups too.

Both the pups were adopted by Pardhi tribesmen living in the forest area, who assisted the officials in killing the pups’ mother after trapping it inside a pit and hitting it with clubs and sticks.

The two adult males and the young female were eventually shot down by hunters and officials of the district administration and forest department.

The entire events – from the wolves’ first officially recorded prey, an eight-year-old boy in village Foodra, to the eventual killing of the four wolves – have been narrated in the book, ‘The Man-Eating Wolves of Ashta’.

The book has been written by late IAS Officer of Madhya Pradesh cadre, Ajay Singh Yadav.

Late Yadav was the Collector of Sehore district when the wolf pack attacks occured. He was instrumental in organizing hunting parties and leading the government’s plan to neutralize the wolves.

Yadav had himself shot down the young female wolf.