Srinagar, May 9 -- Ishaq bin Nabi, along with his family, slept peacefully after a day of hard work in the fields, only to wake up to their freshly sown paddy ravaged by a sounder of wild boars.

Nabi says they have a chunk of some 25 kanals of land and the family had to first fence a patch of land with tin sheets and then sow the grains again. "Wild boars have wreaked havoc in the Kharif and legume land belts of Kashmir, more prominently in the north. They usually come in herds and leave the fields devastated. This didn't happen to us only but to the whole farming community in Hajin. They even debark apple trees," Nabi, 29, said.

This is the story of many farmers. However, the animals' effect has not remained only on farms. An incident ...