Monkeys Abduct Two-Year-Old Boy From His Terrace, Toddler Found Dead In Water Tank Hours Later

A two-year-old boy was found dead in a water tank, hours after he was taken away from his home by a troop of monkeys, authorities said.

According to the police, the toddler, identified as Keshav Kumar was sleeping next to his grandmother in a room on the terrace of their home in the Bhagpat village of Meerut, India, Saturday, Jan. 8, when a troop of monkeys barged in and abducted the boy.

Chandinagar Station House Officer (SHO), O P Singh said the family members who went looking for the boy found his lifeless body floating in their water tank, hours later.

On Sunday, the toddler's parents, Prince and Komal, who are yet to recover from the shock, said that the monkeys had tried to abduct the child earlier too, but their attempt was foiled by alert relatives.

"We didn't expect them to return like this in the dark. We've lost our child," Komal said, the Times of India reported.

The police examined surveillance cameras in the area and learned the boy fell into the water tank when the monkey, carrying the boy, made a jump from one terrace to another.

"After scanning CCTV footage of the area, we found that the monkeys had jumped from the terrace with the child, which was in the arms of one of the simians," the SHO said.

The incident has left the villagers of Bhagpat in disbelief, with many claiming they had alerted the local authorities about the monkeys on several occasions in the past, but to no avail.

Another rare and heartbreaking case was reported in the Indian state of Maharashtra. On Dec. 18, the state’s forest department confirmed that two monkeys have been captured, for allegedly abducting at least 250 puppies and keeping them hostage on trees or home roofs, where they eventually died of starvation or after falling over.

The people of Majalgaon, a town located in the Beed district, are baffled by the rare 'gang war' between monkeys and dogs.

Locals say it all began after a group of dogs mauled a baby monkey to death. In retaliation, the two simians began kidnapping and murdering puppies. The monkeys have allegedly killed more than 200 puppies over the last few months, a resident of the Lavool village claimed.

"These two monkeys come to our village. They take away puppies with them to the roof of houses or at any other place at height. At such a height, these puppies don’t get any food or water. Hence, they died naturally many times. But sometimes they fell from a height and died," a villager, Radhakishan Sonawane, told Press Trust of India (PTI).

However, Range Forest Officer Amol Munde said monkeys taking away puppies is part of their "habit".

"They take care of puppies. They used to keep puppies on roofs or tall trees. The puppies couldn’t survive at such places as they couldn’t get food or water. If a puppy escaped from the two monkeys it used to die after falling from a height," he said.