The Wolves of Ashta were a pack of 6 man-eating Indian wolves which between the last quarter of 1985 to January 1986, killed 17 children in Ashta, Madhya Pradesh, a town in the Sehore district. The pack consisted of two adult males, one adult female, one subadult female and two pups. Initially thought to be a lone animal, the fear caused by the wolves had serious repercussions on the life of the villagers within their hunting range. Farmers became too frightened to leave their huts, leaving crops out of cultivation, and several parents prohibited their children from attending school, for fear that the man-eaters would catch them on the way. So great was their fear, that some village elders doubted the man-eaters were truly wolves at all, but Shaitans. With the exception of the pups, which were adopted by Pardhi tribesmen, all wolves were killed by hunters and forest officials. First victims The first officially recognised victim was a boy of eight, killed in the village of Foodra near Dodi Ghati, on the third week of November. The boy was playing near his family's jowar field, when one of the wolves grabbed him and carried him into the forest. The boy's parents, brandishing a lathi, pursued the wolf, which upon seeing them, left the child, who was by then dead, with his abdominal cavity torn open. The second victim was a baby boy taken from the village of Amala Majju. The child had been left in a sari hammock whilst his mother worked in the nearby fields. Upon returning to feed her son, she found the hammock empty. A search party was organised, and after a few hours of fruitless searching, a splash of blood was found on a leaf. A little further, the child's bloodied clothing was found caught on a Lantana bush. The villagers brought the matter to the attention of the Dodi Forest Officials, who passed the information onto the Ashta Range Officer, who in turn informed the District Forest Officer at Sehore. The Officer sent officials to the village, who upon inspecting the site of the killing, found the tracks of a large male wolf. First hunting strategy A group of hunters and government men, intent on formulating a strategy to tackle the wolf, congregated at a house in the village of Dodi, situated on the banks of the Dudhi river which was at the heart