An eight-year-old boy from Assam was mauled to death by a sloth bear in Valparai in Tamil Nadu on Monday, August 11. The boy, identified as Noor ul Haq, was the son of a migrant worker employed at the Waverly estate near the Valparai waterfalls.
The child had gone to buy milk and had been returning home when the incident occurred. The parents of the boy who went looking for him after he failed to return found milk and blood tracks on the road. The parents and others who were searching for the boy found his body in a nearby tea estate, according to a DT Next report.
The body was then sent to the Valparai Government Hospital for a post-mortem. Following the incident, residents of the area have demanded that cages be placed to capture the animal. The Forest Department later trapped the leopard in a cage. This is the most recent case of man-animal conflict reported from the area.
On June 20, a four-year-old child was killed by a leopard while she was playing in front of her house in the Pachamalai estate in Valparai.