The chilling unsolved case of the Pavagada wolves in Karnataka, India, began in April 1983, when the quiet village of Pavagada was shaken by the strange beasts and horrifying deaths of several juvenile children.
It all started on the evening of April 29th, when in the middle of the night a five-year-old girl was abducted, while sleeping next to her parents near her house. The villagers claimed to have seen a huge wolf-like beast taking her away.
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Ten days later, a three-year-old was motionlessly seized from her bed sleeping beside her mother while the three canines lying at their feet did not verily respond.
This marked the commencement of a chain of catastrophe in and around Pavagada, each exactly the same – a child was quietly taken in the middle of the night, and all that remained were incoherent body parts (craniums, bones, etc.) and blemished scraps of clothes.
Amid the chaos, a police investigation was launched. Inaugural findings revealed paw prints near the location of every killing, from which it was concluded that the killings were being done by man-eating wolves in the neighboring outdoors.
The villagers believed it. This promptly led to a mass ambush of the wolves in Pavagada, creating a significant dip in the population around the area. Interestingly, after taking five girls, the attacks stopped, and for a while, it was believed that the menace had passed.
It Was Just the Beginning
Yet, two months later, a child vanished. The killings had started again. The foremost hypothesis of beast abductions was faced with a strange disclosure.
There were paw prints of an animal near each crime scene but no drag marks that would have appeared from the victim being carried off. There seems to be an eerie connection between the killings.
The victims were females, and most probably the only daughters in the family, all quietly snatched away from beside their sleeping parents, and no drag marks were found on the ground. Only in a single incident, a severed leg was found.
One morning, the villagers encountered a pool of blood and the clothes of the missing child. The footmarks of a beast were visible and the police canine squad tracked the scent to a hillock, only to stop short of a cave, its entrance blocked by a Wall of bricks.
Soon, skepticism surfaced. Were these the work of the wolves, as police claimed?
With no concrete leads, perorations of evil tantriks (occultists) began to surface, as it looked like the work of tantriks with suppositions that the children were being kidnapped for ritual offerings.
Cannibal wolves or the beasts in Pavagada? Or was it a werewolf? The theories were infinite, but the abductions went on. By the end of five months, 7 children were snared and 4 other people were dead.
The Police and Forest Department were at loggerheads, but the government backed the wolf hypothesis.
What Went Wrong?
Nearly forty years afterward, the conundrum still remains unsolved. So what went wrong? Let’s understand some of the most baffling aspects of this incident.
The victims were all adolescent children below the age of 5.
All the victims were girls, some of them only daughters of their parents.
Each child was taken in the same way – quietly, in the middle of the night while sleeping next to their parents.
Canines sleeping around weren’t startled and remained quiet.
All that remained of the victims were some segregated body parts and clothes of threads.
Beasts were suspected first, which led to mass hunts, after which the killings stopped for someday.
While paw prints were seen at the crime scenes, there were no drag marks of the victims.
Verily after the wolves’ hunt, the killings continued.
With no concrete validation, skepticism turned to humans and tantriks.
Again, no concrete evidence of human involvement was proved apart from dubitation.
So, do we have got a conclusion? Reports claimed that the victims were largely adolescent girls, and not a single male child was taken. Is not it absurd?
Why a maximum of the victims were females? In the case of the beasts, the abductions should have been random as the beasts would snatch anyone, male or female, with the common point being children as targets which are the easiest victims for beasts.
Or it could be because the female child population was larger than the males in that area. Nonetheless, if every single victim was female, it seems doubtful that wolves or beasts in Pavagada would have done this, having no reason to prey specifically on females.
In that case, a mortal killer seems a far more likely suspect. Perhaps a lunatic killer, or a Tantrik for his rituals?
Pavagada Wolves, Tantrik or a Werewolf?
Witness accounts also vary in different reports. In some reports, there were no sightings or any visual description of the killer.
Still, in other accounts multiple reports of eye testimonies claiming to have actually seen a ‘large wolf-like figure’ – either at the point of the snatches or in some cases, indeed in the act of snatching the child off.
In Pavagada, the case of a large wolf-like beast – similar to a werewolf – could the lack of drag marks be explained due to the size differences between the children taken and the wolves themselves? Or a mythical beast who was unknown to the villagers?
All of the reports claim that the victims were either five years old or adolescents.
Possibly a large wolf would be strong enough to carry children of that size without requiring to drag them along on the ground, therefore explaining the lack of drag marks next to the paw prints.
And if beasts were spotted, why did all accounts describe that skepticism later shifted to tantriks? And what caused the killings to ultimately stop?
The reports were as twisted as the incident making it problematic to indeed put on the table. The case was closed as the killings ended.
Nothing came out apart from the suppositions. The Police and Forest officers criticized each other and the government criticized both of them.
What do you suppose really transpired? Which hypothesis do you suspect? The Pavagada wolves, tantriks, werewolves, or suchlike mythical beasts or something entirely supernatural?
