![](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/branded_news/20BA/production/_122487380_1-siahoukathishome.jpg)
Lying on the floor of his modest home, Siahouk was in excruciating pain from the injury to his right hand, the result of a nightmarish encounter. Just two days earlier, on a scorchingly hot August afternoon, the frail 70-year-old shepherd had gone to fetch water from a pond when he was pounced on by a gando, the local name for a mugger crocodile in Iran’s Baluchistan region.