By Anushka Vats,News18

Copyright news18

Surajia Bai Jatav didn’t think she could make it when she was confronted by a jackal on Monday at nearly 5 PM, when she had gone to her field to cut fodder. The 65-year-old widow from Shivpuri district in Madhya Pradesh was attacked by the jackal and has survived 18 bite wounds.
As the jackal kept biting her on her legs and hands, she fought back before she fell unconscious. She grabbed the jackal by its jaw and forced it to the ground as she struggled.
She then ripped a strip from her sari, made a loop out of that, and slipped it over the jackal’s neck after almost 20 minutes of struggling. When the animal lunged once more, she tightened the cloth with all her remaining strength until it went still. Completely exhausted, she collapsed beside it, reported the Times of India.
“I thought I was going to die,” she was quoted as saying as she gained consciousness in the hospital.
At first, she was taken to the Badarwas health center and then referred to the Shivpuri district hospital. One of her relatives said that they were scared before she opened her eyes.
“We feared the worst until she opened her eyes well past midnight,” a relative was quoted as saying by the TOI.
According to the doctors cited by the outlet, she is currently stable and will take almost a week to recover.
“She is stable, on anti-rabies injections, and should recover in about a week,” district hospital doctors said.
This incident came only six months after her brother-in-law was attacked by a jackal, and then died after he developed rabies-like symptoms.