From the archive record
A villager in India has a lucky escape when he was saved from a deadly Sloth Bear attack by a crowd that descends upon the bear with sticks and stones, fast turning into a riot, in Itarsi, Madhya Pradesh. The crowd abused the bear and progressively pulverized it, ending up lynching the creature and creating a bonfire of its remains. In a brutal tit-for-tat, these central Indian villagers attacked a Sloth Bear that turned on a man, and bludgeoned it to death after which they set it on fire, in a grotesque display of lynching. These sad images throw up the very real problem faced by wildlife in India, that of human-animal conflict, habitat loss and the ingress of human beings into traditional wildlife habitats. This footage is part of the professionally-shot broadcast stock footage archive o