Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
An eight-month-old girl was allegedly snatched by a wild animal from her family’s temporary hut during the night in Narsala area. The infant’s mutilated body was later found nearby which left her migrant labourer parents shattered and the entire locality gripped by fear and grief. Preliminary findings suggest the attack may have been carried out by a fox or hyena, rather than a leopard.
The deceased has been identified as Anushka Ravikishan Meda, whose family originally hails from Similia village in Madhya Pradesh.
According to police, around eight months ago, Anushka’s father Ravikishan arrived in Nagpur along with about 25 other labourers and their families to work on a sewer pipeline project in the Narsala area. The contractor had arranged makeshift huts for the workers in an open field near the Narsala crematorium. These huts have since been home to the labourers and their families, including small children.
On Friday night, Ravikishan, his wife, and their infant daughter were asleep inside their hut. In the dead of night, an animal is believed to have entered the hut silently and carried the baby away. It was around 2 am when Ravikishan woke up and realised that Anushka was missing. He immediately woke his wife and alerted nearby workers. A frantic search began, but there was no trace of the child.
As panic spread, someone informed the police control room, which alerted Hudkeshwar police. ACP Narendra Hiware and ACP Satyaveer Bandiwar and other police personnel, rushed to the spot and joined the search operation. After some time, the baby’s body was found about 30 metres away from the hut.
A police official said that the sight was devastating. Parts of the child’s body were missing, and the grieving parents collapsed in shock and sorrow, he said. Fellow labourers tried to console them.
The forest department was also informed, and its officials examined the scene. Preliminary observations suggested that the animal involved may not have been a leopard, but possibly a fox or a hyena that wandered into the area and attacked the child.
Police conducted an initial investigation at the spot and later sent the body to the Government Medical College and Hospital for post-mortem examination. Hudkeshwar police have registered a case of accidental death.
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