Man misses monkey, shoots cousin in Vizag Agency

Visakhapatnam: In a freak incident, a tribal man, while aiming to kill a monkey with a homemade firearm, missed and killed his cousin. The event happened at Boddavalasa village under Ananthagiri Mandal in Visakhapatnam on December 18.

The police have identified the deceased as G Sanyasi Rao alias Sanyasi (20) and the accused as D Sanyasi Rao alias Sunny (28). The victim and the accused were good friends and natives of Boddavalasa village.

Recently, monkeys have been entering Boddavalasa village from the nearby forest, destroying their tamarind fruits maize, and tomatoes. Fed up with the monkey menace in their town, a group of five — Sanyasi, Sunny, G Balaraju, S Sanyasi Rao and G Prasad —decided to take action. The youngsters went to the forest near their village on Wednesday morning to chase and kill the monkeys.

When the five-member team saw a large number of monkeys on a tree, Sanyasi went up to chase them away with a bamboo stick, which his cousin Sunny failed to notice. Sunny aimed at a group of monkeys and fired a shot. However, he missed the target, and the bullet pierced Sanyasi’s head, killing him on the spot.

Sub-Inspector of Ananthagiri police station K Sudhakar visited the crime spot along with his team. The police shifted the dead body to a government hospital for an autopsy.

The police said that Sanyasi and Sunny belonged to a joint family, who owns over 100 tamarind trees and few other crops. Since they have depended on the tamarind fruit to provide them good income, the duo decided to save it from the monkeys.

The police said that they have registered a case against Sunny under Section 304 of IPC and arrested him.