AGRA – An infant has died after he was snatched from his mother’s arms by a monkey in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
Despite the best efforts by neighbours to scare the monkey into releasing the infant, the animal managed to take away the toddler. Later, the body of 12-day-old Arush was recovered from the roof of a neighbour’s house in a village north of Agra.
The baby’s father, an auto-rickshaw driver who gave his name as Yogesh, told the Times of India: “The main door of the house was open and my wife was breastfeeding our son. Suddenly a monkey barged inside our house and grabbed the child by the neck.”
“Before [we] could understand anything, the monkey took away our son. After a chase the monkey left our son on a neighbour’s roof, but it was too late. [He] was heavily bleeding and had no pulse. We took him to a nearby hospital but he was declared dead.”
The baby was the only child of the couple, who have been married for two years.
Police said the injuries indicated the child had been bitten on the face.
Monkey bites are the second most common attacks by animals in the South Asian country, after dogs. According to the New Delhi government, 268 cases of monkey bites were recorded by authorities in the capital in 2016.
