A camel was beaten to death by angry villagers after it reportedly decapitated its owner in India.
Sohanram Nayak tried to recapture the enraged animal after it broke free from its rope constraints, trying to chase down another camel in Panchu village, Bikaner, in Rajasthan state on Monday night.
The animal then picked its owner up by the neck, threw him on the ground, and ‘chewed off his head’, according to The Times of India.
Angry villagers armed with sticks tied the camel to a tree before bludgeoning it to death.
According to local reports, the victim’s family members were involved in the beating of the camel. The body of Sohanram Nayak was handed over to his relatives after a post-mortem.
No complaint has so far been made over the killing of the state animal.
Rajasthan, a state in northern India, banned the slaughter and injury of camels in 2015. The crime, outlined in the aptly-named Rajasthan Camel Bill 2015, is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine.
The bill noted an ‘alarming’ decline in the number of camels in the region in recent years, observing that the camel was ‘an integral part of the desert eco-system of the State’.