Two weeks later, she is still undergoing treatment at Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj Medical University. The wounds are healing, but the nightmare will always be etched in her memory.

Anita, a housewife, had gone to the field near her house in the evening to relieve herself when a tiger attacked her from behind.

She had heard the tiger was on the prowl in the area, but had not paid heed to it. “It caught me by my shoulder and tried to drag me,” she recalled.

“When I tried to resist, it pinned me down with its paws and started dragging me towards the jungle,” she said.  

Every time she tried to free herself, the tiger tightened its hold and kept dragging her, injuring her head, neck, back, left ear and legs.

“I was helpless. I thought that no one could save me till the time I heard voices of the villagers, when the tiger suddenly freed me,” she said. 

Later, she got to know that she was in the clutches of the tiger for about 10 minutes, “but it felt like a lifetime.”

Today, Anita is alive owing to her 12-year-old niece Phoolan Devi, whom she had taken along with her to the field. When she saw the tiger attack her aunt, she immediately ran to the village, shouting for help. By the time the villagers arrived, the tiger had dragged Anita about 100 metres towards the forest.

“I was at home when she came running and shouting. Immediately, I asked those around to gather the villagers and rushed to the spot on my tractor. I saw the tiger dragging her,” said Shravan Kumar, Anita’s husband.

“It is only after we started shouting and focussed the tractor’s headlights on the tiger that it left her,” he added.  

“Even though the maneater left her, it kept sitting at a distance and kept gazing at us, before walking away into the jungle once we picked her,” said Shravan.

After the rescue, the forest officials took Anita to a hospital in Kheri from where she was brought to CSSMU the following day.