In yet another case of a wild animal snuffing out the life of a human, a forest official was brutally mauled to death by a wild bear in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh. According to Zee News, the middle-aged official who was employed with the Chhattisgarh Forest Department was attacked by a fully grown female sloth bear in the dense forests of an area known as Surajpur.

NDTV adds that the forest official was part of a group that had entered the forest in order to track and hunt down this very bear. Local villagers living on the outskirts of the forest had reported about a wild bear that had in the recent past attacked and killed another man from the area. Officials have confirmed that this is the same bear that eventually attacked one of their officials.

The circumstances in which the attack took place is still under mystery. A horrifying video footage (Warning: The video is extremely graphic in nature) that shows the bear mauling the forest official has been uploaded to YouTube as well. It is unclear as to why no one came forward to save the man as the bear viciously attacked him repeatedly. The case is even more perplexing because there the guard was a part of a group that had went into kill this very bear. It is therefore highly probable that there were armed gunmen near the vicinity when this attack took place. The Zee News report adds that the man was surrounded by a few locals who were simply too scared to scare the animal away and chose to stay away from the animal as it mauled the forest official. They did however make attempts to shoo it away by throwing rocks and stones at it – with little effect. Chhattisgarh State Forest officials eventually shot the bear and killed it. The help however came too late for the forest guard who succumbed to his injuries at the spot itself.

Of late, there have been an increase in the number of wild animal attacks in India. In late 2014, the Inquisitr had reported about a similar incident from southern India where a sloth bear mauled an elderly man to death. Another man was injured and lost an eye in the same attack. Prior to that there was the rather strange case of an individual jumping in to a tiger enclosure at a zoo in Delhi. He was mauled to death by a captive white tiger as visitors watched helplessly. Closer home, in the United States, an elderly hunter was attacked by a Grizzly bear in Alaska back in November.

[Image Via Wikimedia Commons ]