The Mumbai Mirror of India is reporting a story that seems unbelievable, considering the timing and the news of Vice President Dick Cheney and his miscue around shooting at quail. We, of course, at Cryptomundo, wonder about the bear too.

Entitled “Congress leader killed by shots aimed at bear,” here’s the essence of the story:

A Congress leader was killed on [February 15, 2006] when police reportedly opened fire to rescue him from the clutches of a killer bear.

DIG of Police (Northern Range) Pranabindu Acharya said that the team, accompanied by Congress leader and chairman of the Rairakhol Panchayat Samiti, Harekrushna Pradhan, had reached the spot in Bhartapur village, Orrisa, where the body of one of the bear’s victims lay, when the creature emerged from the nearby jungle and attacked Pradhan.

The police shot at the bear to free Pradhan. However, the bullets hit Pradhan, who died on the spot, according to Acharaya. “We can give you details only after the post-mortem is conducted,” Acharya said, adding that the bear was also killed in the firing.

The Leader of the Opposition J B Patnaik told reporters in Bhubaneswar that he had received information that said the panchayat samiti chairman had been ‘killed in police firing’. 

The original source has more details on the upset caused by the killing, but those are the basics.

More information on the bear and the reason for the attack are lacking. This is not cryptozoological, per se, but the coincidence is strange, to say the least.

Many thanks to Richard D. Hendricks, news editor at The Anomalist for passing this along.