BELAGAVI: In a dare-devil act, a 13-year-old school boy rescued his 14-year-old cousin from the clutches of three bears, including two cubs, in the thick forests of Khanapur.
The boy tackled three bears, which pounced on his cousin, with a wooden log and saved the latter from the jaws of death. His life-saving act has made Sachin a hero overnight in Khanapur taluk as several people and leaders have hailed and felicitated him for saving his cousin risking his life.
Ganesh Patil, Sachin’s cousin who sustained serious injuries in the bear attack is admitted to a private hospital where he is slowly recuperating, said Sachin’s parents, adding that Ganesh sustained head injuries and got both his hands fractured in the incident.
Sachin, who hails from Haliyal town, said he had been to his maternal uncle’s house at Tavarkatti for his summer vacation when the incident occured.
“Along with Ganesh and two other friends on Sunday, I was busy searching for cashew nuts and jamun trees in the forests of Khanapur when the bears jumped out of the forest and attacked us,’’ he recalled.
“When we four began running towards the village to escape the three bears, Ganesh fell down and came under attack. As he began shouting, he was trapped, I turned back and stopped running but two other friends vanished. The bears were attacking Ganesh. Luckily, I found a thick wooden log which I picked up and rushed to attack the bears,’’ Sachin said.
Sachin said he hit two small bears hard on the face after which they ran away into the forest, but the mother bear continued attacking Ganesh.
“I then began hitting the big bear on its nose and face hard with the log. I hit its face at least six times on its face and saw that it vanished from the spot into the forest,’’ Sachin recalls.
Sachin had heard from people living in forest areas in and around his village that bears should be hit on their face and nose if they attack humans.