Eight-year-old boy mauled to death by sloth bear in Tamil Nadu's Valparai

An eight-year-old boy was mauled to death by a sloth bear near a tea plantation in Tamil Nadu’s Valparai in Coimbatore district on Monday evening.

The victim, Noor-Ul-Haq, was the son of a couple from Assam who work in a local tea estate. Police said he had gone to a nearby house to fetch milk when the bear, which had strayed from the plantation, pounced on him and dragged him away.

When the child did not return, his parents began searching and found spilled milk and bloodstains along the path. Plantation workers joined the search and found Noor-Ul-Haq’s body, which had been partially eaten.

Officials said the bear had consumed one of the child’s eyes, part of his face, and a portion of his brain.

Kaadampaarai Police and forest officials retrieved the body and sent it to the government hospital for a post-mortem.

This is the second such incident in the area in recent months. In June, four-year-old Roshini Kumari, the daughter of a couple from Jharkhand, was dragged away by a leopard while playing outside her home in Kaliyammal residential area near Pachamalai Estate.

The animal had been hiding in a nearby tea estate and attacked within seconds. A search involving police, forest officials, and sniffer dogs found her body 300 metres away in a dense eucalyptus forest, with body parts scattered.

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