Baby 'snatched by monkey' found dead

NEW DELHI: Indian police say a 16-day-old baby boy believed to have been snatched by a monkey has been found drowned in a well.

The infant was sleeping under a mosquito net at his home in the eastern state of Odisha on Friday when he was taken by a rhesus macaque, a species with a reddish-pink face common across India.

“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 told AFP.

“We launched a search along with the forest officers. Yesterday (Sunday) the baby was spotted inside the well dead,” she told AFP.

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.”