A stray dog was seen walking around the streets with the head of an infant in its jaws in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. Police on Wednesday seized the head from the dog and launched an investigation to locate the body of the infant.

Authorities said that the dog was spotted holding the head in its jaws in the Raja Bazaar area of the city by a resident.

“It seems that the head got detached from the body about two days back. We are investigating whether it was severed by somebody or whether dogs bit it off. It was sent for postmortem and we are trying to locate the body,” a police official told local media.

Local police have registered a case under sections 315 (Act done with intent to prevent child being born alive or to cause it to die after birth) and 318 (Concealment of birth by secret disposal of dead body) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

The age of the baby remains unknown, and it is unclear if the baby was a newborn.

newborn
Representational image. Getty Images/Christopher Furlong

In a case earlier this month, a stray dog entered a government hospital in the Indian state of Gujrat and dragged a newborn baby in its jaws. The newborn baby boy was in the maternity ward of a civil hospital and was one of the twins delivered.

The baby boy was the first to be delivered and was in the labor room with the mother. Surveillance footage showed the dog carrying the baby in its mouth.

Sources at the hospital said that the mother of the baby saw the dog carrying the child and screamed for help but there was no hospital staff who came for help.“There is gross negligence on the part of the staff present at the hospital," a doctor at the hospital said at the time.

The child's grandmother claimed that the dog had most likely "eaten" the baby.

In January, dogs mauled a newborn baby to death in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The three-hour-old baby was attacked by the pack of dogs, who got into the hospital through a window. Police said the newborn had injuries all over his body.

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