Guest worker’s son mauled to death by sloth bear in Valparai

COIMBATORE: An eight-year-old boy, the son of a guest worker from Assam, was mauled to death by a sloth bear in Valparai on Monday evening. The boy, S Noorul Islam, was residing with his parents in the workers’ quarters at the Waverly Estate near Waterfalls Post in Valparai.

On Monday evening, the boy was sent to a nearby provision store to buy milk. While the boy was walking back home after buying milk from the store, a sloth bear emerged from the bushes and attacked him. “The boy suffered serious injuries and died on the spot,” a forest officer said.When the boy had not returned home for a long time, his parents conducted a search and found his body inside the bushes, nearly 500 meters away from their residence.The public alerted the forest department and police, who rushed to the spot and sent the body to Valparai Government Hospital for postmortem.Residents demanded that the forest department place a cage to capture the sloth bear. They demanded that the department and the district administration take necessary action to prevent human-animal conflict in the region.