AHMEDABAD: A 50-year-old woman was mauled to death by a lion at a village in Gujarat's Amreli district near Gir Wildlife Sanctuary, a forest official said today.
The victim, Labuben Solanki, was preyed upon by the lion around midnight while she was sleeping outside the house of a relative whom she had gone to visit in Bharad village in Dhari taluka, Assistant Conservator of Forest (Dhari) M N Muni said.
The victim was a relative of one of the labourers who have come here to work at a mango orchard, he said.
"She was dragged away by a lion and her body was recovered some 500 metres away from the spot," Muni said.
When the lion attacked her, the other persons present there ran after the carnivore. They chased it for nearly 400 metres but the lion did not let her go off, he said.
Her half-eaten body was recovered from a nearby thorny bush. The locals informed about the incident to forest officials, who then reported the matter to police.
This is the second incident of a person being attacked by a lion in less than a month in Dhari forest area, which has a sizable lion population.
On March 19, a 62-year-old man was in a similar manner killed by a lion when he was camping near Ambariya village in Dhari taluka of Amreli.
Gir houses about 523 Asiatic lions, as per the census conducted in May last year. Out of the total, 268 lions are in Junagadh district, 174 in Amreli, 44 in Gir-Somnath and 37 in Bhavnagar.