A 41-year-old software engineer in Bengaluru, India, died after being bitten by a venomous Russell's viper that was hiding inside his Crocs footwear. The incident occurred on Saturday in the Bannerghatta district of the southern Indian state of Karnataka.
Manju Prakash had stepped out briefly to buy sugarcane juice for his mother around 12:30 pm local time. After returning home, he handed the juice to his sister-in-law and went to rest. About an hour later, family members found him unresponsive, frothing at the mouth, with a bite mark on his toe.
Relatives suggested that Prakash may not have felt the bite due to lingering numbness in his leg from a 2016 bus accident, which required surgery and resulted in loss of sensation. Upon inspection, a small Russell's viper was found trapped inside his Crocs, believed to have suffocated while trying to escape.
Despite being rushed to hospital, doctors pronounced him dead on arrival, confirming snakebite as the cause. Police have registered the case as an unnatural death and are awaiting a postmortem report. The area borders several green spaces, and the snake may have entered from there.
