It is highly improbable that a sloth bear can kill 4 people. There are cases of people getting mauled by a sloth bear. It happens, when one inadvertently bumps into a sleeping sloth bear. In such situations, the first reaction of any animal is to run away. In case you have breached the fight to flight distance and are much closer than the comfort zone, the sloth bear will rear itself up on its hind legs and scratch the person. Most often the person shows up in the hospital with bad lacerations. One of the foresters in Bandhavgarh was also got his face disfigured by a sloth bear. In all such cases, when one person is mauled, others run away. And the sloth bear after scratching the person runs away. So even if one person is scratched, how can the other three also get killed?

This appears to be a clear case of murder. I think the bodies of the persons would have been cut by a sharp weapon to resemble the scratch marks done by a bear. And the alacrity with which the police shot the sloth bear smells of foul play.

How did they know that the sloth bear was indeed the culprit? Did the wait to see whether this was an isolated incident or not? If so, why the sloth bear was killed? Normally, they tranquilise and relocate the animal. Why this procedure was not followed?

It is a known fact that whenever in the past there were cases of man-eating tiger or leopard, people used to settle their old enmities and put the blame on the animal. So most often the figures of these killings were inflated.

At times, when you bump into a tiger or leopard guarding its kill or if it is with its cubs, they may maul the person and run away from the place. At times, it is seen that the animal returns to the scene and having found the body of the person lying and the sight of blood, eat a portion of the body. However, this never makes them a man eater.

Sabyasachi