Monkey Kills Newborn After Snatching Him From Breastfeeding Mother

Source: Om Prakash Maurya / Getty

Monkey Grabs Baby From Mothers Arms Before Biting Him To Death

A monkey swiped a newborn baby from his breastfeeding mother’s arms and tragically bit him to death. This attack came only two days before a pack of simians killed a 58-year-old woman in the same Indian city.

The 12-day-old infant was in his mother’s arms while inside their home in the city of Agra, which is when the rhesus macaques suddenly barged in and grabbed the baby, the BBC reported.

According to the report, locals ran after the monkey until it finally dropped the severely injured child onto a neighbor’s roof. The baby died of his injuries at a hospital. “The monkey bit the infant’s head and only dropped him when people chased it with sticks and threw stones at it,” Ajay Kaushal, the officer in charge at the nearby police station, told Reuters.

The family was obviously devastated following the attack. The child’s uncle Dhirendra Kumar told the BBC,  “There are too many monkeys in the area. We live in fear. We have told the administration so many times to help us but they haven’t done anything. The mother of the baby is too distraught to even speak.”

The baby’s grandmother Pushpa Devi told the station that the family would “never recover” from the sudden loss. “I have lost my grandson,” Devi explained. “Just a few hours before the monkey attacked our baby, I had him in my arms. Our baby didn’t have to die. People will talk about it for a while and then forget it. But we have to live with the reality that our baby is gone.”

Jus two days after this devastating attack, 58-year-old Bhoomi Devi was killed after monkeys attacked her when she had gone out of her house at Thok Mohalla, The Telegraph India reported. She was rushed to a hospital, but could not be saved.

These deaths are the latest in a string of monkey attacks in the city, which is home to an estimated 25,000 monkeys.

“Monkeys are everywhere in Agra,” local environmental activist Shravan Kumar Singh told Reuters, adding that the animals have become more aggressive after being displaced from their natural habitats. “They come in search of food, but they snatch and attack as well.” Some local organizations are calling for a complete overhaul of the situation including for authorities to compensate monkey attack victims, for the animals to be sterilized and for their exclusion from legislation protecting wildlife, Singh said.