A 28-year-old woman was admitted to the psychiatry ward of the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital (CMCH) after she recently tried to kill two of her children.
It is said that the woman was also in the habit of drinking the blood of chickens and dogs.
A native of Uttar Pradesh, she lived in a rented house at Maniyakaranpalayam near Ganapathy. Recently, while her husband was asleep, she allegedly tried to drown her six -month-old baby boy in a barrel of water and suffocate to death her three-year-old daughter. However, her husband managed to save the children in the nick of time.
It has been further claimed that when she was stopped by her husband, she shouted “I need blood,” ran out to the street and caught hold of a stray dog. While neighbours, who had gathered by then, watched, the woman reportedly cut open the animal’s neck and consumed its blood for a while.
Taken aback by her behaviour, her husband first took her to a dargah in Pollachi for treatment. However, as soon as the couple, both daily wage earners, stepped out of the dargah the woman again caught another stray dog and sucked its blood as she had done before.
After she was taken home too, she reportedly killed some chickens reared in a cage in their house and drank their blood.
As word about her condition spread, people of the locality asked her husband to take his wife and children to his native place.
However, he took the woman to the CMCH, where she was admitted to the psychiatry ward. She has apparently been put in a separate cell at the ward. The woman is under observation, sources at the CMCH said.
Her husband, in the meantime, shifted his children to a home.