A 16-day-old baby boy alleged to have been stolen by a monkey in India has been found dead in a well.
The incident happened on Friday when the child lay asleep under a mosquito net at his home in the eastern state of Odisha, when a rhesus macaque, a species with a reddish-pink face common across India, came and picked him up.
“The mother is saying that she saw a monkey take away her child. She raised an alarm but the monkey quickly leaped over the roof and vanished out of sight,” police sub-inspector S.M. Baral stated
“We launched a search along with the forest officers. Yesterday (Sunday) the baby was spotted inside the well dead,”
A post-mortem showed the infant died of asphyxia due to drowning, Baral said.
“Since there were no injury marks on the baby, maybe the monkey dropped him in the well.”
No case was registered as the “family is convinced it’s the monkey that killed their child”, the officer said. The incident happened in the village of Talabasta in Cuttack district.
In march last year a government employee died from head injuries after a monkey landed on him from a tree, the daily reported.
Though revered in the majority Hindu nation, monkeys are a menace in many cities, trashing gardens and office and residential rooftops and often viciously attacking people for food.
Activists say the invasion of the animal’s natural habitats by urban populations has caused the problem