Ahmedabad: For nearly half an hour on Monday morning, residents of Garajiya village in Palitana taluka witnessed a stunning display of composure: a subadult lioness sat on Maldhari herder Kalu Parmar without fatally attacking him while he lay beneath with apparent calm, patting the animal as villagers shouted and threw stones to drive it away.Why the lioness held back, no one can say with certainty. That Parmar walked away with only claw injuries is what makes the viral video of the encounter so widely discussed. The subadult lioness attacked Parmar outside his house after moving through the village, where she had reportedly confronted another resident earlier.She pinned Parmar down and held him in place, with a foreleg placed across his body. She remained seated on him, pressing him down each time he tried to rise. Parmar suffered only claw injuries as the lioness did not bite him.“I was going to feed my cattle when the lioness suddenly attacked me from behind. The big cat caught hold of my hand and did not let me go for a long time,” Parmar said. He was first taken to the govt hospital in Palitana and then shifted to Sir T Hospital in Bhavnagar for specialised treatment.The footage is a rare display of calm under deathly pressure as it shows Parmar making no sudden movements, his hand occasionally rising to pat the animal, as if to calm it down in a desperate bid to save himself. Another lion was seen moving around the premises of Parmar’s house even as the drama unfolded outside. The stone-pelting by villagers also appeared to irritate the animal.“This was the first time a lion attacked a villager, though we have a sizeable population of big cats in the hilly area nearby,” said Karmasinh Chauhan, a village leader. “Kalu told us he could not believe his luck. When the lioness sat on him, he thought it was the end. He immediately started patting it, hoping the animal would let him go.”Earlier that morning, villagers said, the lioness had entered the residential area and charged at another resident. “A buffalo came between the villager and the lioness, and that is how the man and his mother survived,” Chauhan claimed.Residents said they had repeatedly alerted the forest department about frequent lion movements in the village over the past several years and had demanded immediate measures to prevent such encounters.Officials said an inquiry suggested that the lioness had made a kill near Garajiya on Sunday and entered the village on Monday. “Villagers chased and threw stones at the animal, leaving her agitated. Kalu went to rescue his cattle, which were near the lioness, and was attacked,” an official said.Chirag Amin, deputy conservator of forests, said the village falls within a regular lion habitat area in Palitana. He said the lioness has been identified and teams equipped with tranquilising guns are in the area to capture her.Senior researchers at the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) described the behaviour as quite unusual, noting that a lion rarely spares anyone who gets so close and that just one bite, followed by a sustained attack, would almost certainly have killed the man.What stood out to them was Parmar’s composure, as he remained calm and made no attempt to wriggle out from under the animal’s paws. Another researcher said the lioness may have been familiar with the village and possibly accustomed to being fed there. Meanwhile, in Savarkundla, a lion attacked a man while he was asleep outside his house on Sunday night. He was hospitalised with severe leg injuries.
