Indian woman, armed only with farm tools, fights off leopard

The fight is said to have lasted a half-hour and pitted a leopard against a woman armed only with farm tools in an isolated field in India. Kalama Devi, at 54 years old, won, CNN reports.

Devi, a widow and mother of one, has been telling her story from a hospital bed in Srinagar, in Uttarakhand state, where she's being treated for fractures, swelling, scratches and cuts to her skull that have required 50 stitches.

"I held the leopard with my hands, it then bit my hand and then left it. ... Both my hands are in immense pain and I am not able to lift them up," she said.

According to the doctor who's treating her, the leopard pounced about 10 a.m. Sunday as Devi walked through a field in the village of Koti Badma, in the Rudraprayag district of Uttarakhand.

It fractured her left hand first, so with her right hand clutching a sickle she repeatedly hit the animal -- for a half-hour.

She said she kept pounding the leopard until she ran out of energy, then, exhausted and bleeding, limped one kilometer to a nearby village to seek help, Dr. Abdul Rahul at the HNB Base Hospital in Srinagar told CNN.

Villagers found the leopard dead when they went to the scene of the reported attack, the doctor said.