An eight-year-old girl, Shravani Akshay Mandal, died after being bitten by an Indian spectacled cobra while lying on a mattress with her sister at their home in Varkunti village in Palghar district on Sunday afternoon. The snake bit the child through a bedsheet while the girls were watching videos on a mobile phone.

Her elder sister Aaradhya, 9, was unharmed. The girl’s father, a snake rescuer, clarified that he hadn’t been catching snakes for the past six months, and that the snake involved was not one he had caught and kept for later release.