India has an estimated 3,100 wolves spread over a number of states

Four-year-old Sandhya was sleeping outside her mud hut in India’s Uttar Pradesh state on the night of 17 August when a power cut plunged the village into darkness.
“The wolves attacked within two minutes of the lights going out. By the time we realised what was happening, they had taken her away,” recalls her mother, Sunita.
Sandhya’s body was found lying next day in the sugarcane farms, some 500 metres from her home.
Earlier in the month, in a neighbouring village, eight-year-old Utkarsh was sleeping under a mosquito net when his mother spotted a wolf creeping into their hut.
“The animal lunged from the shadows. I screamed, ‘Leave my son alone!’ My neighbours rushed in, and the wolf fled,” she recounts.
Since mid-April, a wave of wolf attacks has terrorised around 30 villages in Bahraich district, near the border with Nepal. Nine children and an adult have been carried off and killed by the wolves. The youngest victim was a one-year-old boy, and the oldest was a 45-year-old woman. At least 34 others have been injured.

ANI Villagers watch the searching operations of the missing persons after a Boat carrying 20 people drowned in the Bhada River at Lokahi villege of District Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh on Sunday. ANI
Bahraich is a flood-prone district
Fear and hysteria have gripped the affected villages. With many village homes lacking locks, children are being kept indoors, and men are patrolling the darkly lit streets at night. Authorities have deployed drones and cameras, set traps and used firecrackers to scare away the wolves. So far, three wolves have been captured and relocated to zoos.
Such attacks on humans are extremely rare and most involve wolves infected with rabies, a viral disease that affects the central nervous system. A rabid wolf will typically make multiple assaults without consuming the victims.
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A report by the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research reported 489 “relatively reliable cases” of wolf attacks in 21 countries – including India – between 2002 and 2020. Only 26 of them were fatal. Around 380 people were victims of “rabid attacks”.
There have been only two confirmed cases of wolf-related fatalities in North America over the past 50 years, Dave Mech, a renowned American biologist who specialises in wolf behaviour, told the BBC. This is despite a population of approximately 70,000 wolves spread across North America.
So why are wolves attacking humans in Bahraich?
Nestled between a river and forests, parts of Bahraich have long been a traditional wolf habitat. Located in the floodplain of the Ghaghara river, the district, home to 3.5 million people, is prone to seasonal flooding.