The Case of the Goonch in India: A Man-eating Fish?

In 1998, a seventeen year old boy, swimming in the gentle waters of  the Kali River near the India Nepal border, was mysteriously pulled down into the water of the river in front of the horrified and helpless eyes of his girlfriend and several other eyewitnesses. The reason of his disappearance baffled everyone as there seemed no apparent reason to justify this happening.

Three months later, in the waters of the same river not far away from the place of occurrence of the first event, a young boy was dragged into the depths of the Kali River, again by an unknown force while his father stood petrified not knowing what to do.

These two incidents were then followed by an elongated period of peace with no further reports of such disappearances of river victims. However, the underwater terror surfaced again in 2007 when an eighteen year old Nepalese man suffered a similar fate as the previous two victims. Eye-witnesses of this event claimed they saw something like a ‘giant pig’ dragging the man into the depths of the Kali river.

With the attacker remaining elusive, wildlife biologists and naturalists started their investigations in the area. Jeremy Wade, a television presenter of the series River Monsters and an expert angler, decided to investigate the mysterious case of these victims. At first, he was dubious of the truth but when his investigations revealed that all the three incidents occurred within an area spanning 4-5 miles, he became more interested. 

By David Shankbone (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Jeremy Wade

There were several possibilities which could result in these disappearances such as presence of whirlpools in the area or attacks by crocodiles. Each aspect was investigated separately by Wade but none seemed to have a firm standing. Since the water in the region was non-turbulent, hidden whirlpools could be crossed out of the list of suspects. Saltwater crocodiles had no chance of venturing so far into inland waters. The cold waters of the Kali are also not an ideal habitat for the Mugger crocodiles and Gharials, the only Crocodilians with a possibility to inhabit this place, did not have jaws suitable to attack and kill a human. So, what was then the invisible force which was responsible for these three human deaths?

While the investigations were on, a buffalo was reported to be dragged into the water in a similar manner to the human victims. Wade and his team scourged the rivers for days to find the possible attacker of this buffalo. Bull sharks were one last remaining possibility but none were detected in the region.

Strangely, after further investigations, Wade discovered giant Goonch catfish living in the region, especially in the area of the river where the buffalo died. 

The Goonch (Bagarius yarrelli) are large sized fishes with a broad mouth and razor-sharp teeth. Their pectoral and dorsal fins have strong spines. The Goonch caught by Wade weighed over 75 kgs and had a length of about 6 feet! However, Wade believed that this giant fish could have killed a human child but there must be larger ones in the waters that are capable of killing adult humans too! The locals in the region had their own say in this matter. According to them, the Goonch fed on the half burnt bodies released into the river from the nearby funeral pyres. In this manner, the fish developed a taste of human flesh and attacked people on the river and devoured them.

Even though nothing conclusive was derived regarding the real reason of disappearance of the human and animal victims in the Kali river, a giant sized, mutant Goonch with a man-eating tendency, is considered to be guilty for the attacks as per current beliefs.