Bitten twice while ‘playing with cobra’ for stunt, man dies in Muzaffarnagar

According to eyewitnesses, a cobra appeared at the house of Tinku’s neighbour, Mangal, who then called the 24-year-old as he had earlier caught snakes in the area on two or three occasions. Without any protective gear, Tinku reached Mangal’s house and managed to trap the snake after trying for nearly half an hour.

What followed was recorded on mobile phones by Mangal’s family members. Instead of placing the reptile in a sack, Tinku apparently began performing stunts for the camera — he started swinging the deadly snake in the air and wrapping it around his neck for the camera, without realising that the cobra had bit him once on the neck and on his hand.

“He (Tinku) was inebriated at the time and did not realise he had been bitten,” said Station House Officer O P Singh. Eyewitnesses told the police that Tinku continued to play with the snake before eventually putting in a sack and releasing it away from the house.

He returned home around 9 pm, had dinner and went to bed. By 11 pm, his condition deteriorated — his body turned blue by the time family members took him to the Morna health centre, where doctors declared him dead.

The postmortem report is awaited, police said. Officials from the Forest Department was later contacted to locate the cobra and release it into the wild.