Local myth had it for the past years that a giant man-eating monster looms in the depths of the Great Kali river that follows the Indian-Nepali border. A row of mysterious drownings initiated investigations eventually leading to the assumption that giant goonch catfish were responsible for the killings. Since  the river is frequently used to dispose of corpses only partially burned in the course of Hindu funeral rites, the fish are said to have developed a taste for human flesh and hence allegedly started to launch lethal attacks on healthy swimmers.
British biologist Jeremy Wade looked into the story, and though initially rather skeptical, he now thinks it entirely possible that B. yarelli, a suborder to bagarious, a genus of catfishes that inhabit primarily large rivers in South and South East Asia and feed mainly upon prawns, frogs, and small fishes, can, having acquired a certain size (and preference in taste), become man-eaters. Giving a visit to the banks of the Great Kali river, the dedicated extreme angler Wade, who is also host of the popular documentary television series "River Monsters", managed to catch a 161lb 6ft long goonch fish that clearly was looking for corps remains near a funeral pyre. The fish landed was three times the size these catfish normally acquire and the biggest of its species ever caught. Much bigger ones, though, might lurk on the grounds of Kali river; the deaths of a number of humans (and the case of a fully grown water buffalo that was seen drinking in only knee-deep water when it was suddenly dragged down and disappeared) remain unsolved. Also the absence of other possible causes (such as whirlpools, crocodiles or sharks) unfavorably point in the apparently flesh-loving goonches' direction.