Man Seen Eating 'Live Cat' In Viral Video, Allegedly Part Of Ritual

Police in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta started an investigation after a video of a man eating a cat went viral on social media. The incident took place in a crowded market in the capital.

In the disturbing video, the unidentified man can be seen eating the feline with blood dribbling onto his shirt. Though it looked like the cat was already dead, netizens believe the feline was very much alive. Some also speculated that the man ate the cat as part of a black magic ritual.

The video also shows bystanders filming the man eating the feline. The man can be heard threatening the bystanders that he would “finish” them too if they did not stop filming him.

Police said they launched the investigation Monday after the video went viral.

“We want to find him first and ask him why he ate that cat. We don’t know why he ate the cat, whether it’s because he’s mentally challenged or not. But we have not been able to find the man everywhere we looked,” police told local media.

The incident comes months after three men were jailed for killing and eating an engendered monkey while live streaming the act in Vietnam. The video of the incident, which went viral on Facebook in November, showed six men killing the red-shanked douc, a protected species under the country’s law, and eating its raw brain. The video sparked outrage in the country after which the video was removed from the social media site. Following this, the six men were arrested December. In April, three of them were sentenced to one-year imprisonment for "violating regulations on the protection of precious and rare wild animals," while the three others received suspended one-year sentences.