In April 2007, an 18-year-old Nepalese man was swimming with a friend in the shallows of the Kāli River, on the border of Nepal and India, when something dragged him beneath the surface.
Despite a search of the river, lasting many days and for several miles downstream, the man was never seen again. This was not believed to be a straightforward drowning, caused by a weakened swimming stroke or sudden swirl of current, but an attack from a fish.
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An eyewitness on the bank had seen the monster beneath the surface, describing an enormous head and a body shaped like an ‘elongated pig’. He knew it to be a ‘goonch’, and this wasn’t the first such attack.
Where does the goonch catfish live?
The goonch catfish is found in the larger rivers that eventually form the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Basin on the Bay of Bengal. They are a widespread species but categorised as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with overfishing and hydroelectric schemes both impacting populations.
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Goonch have a form typical of many catfish species, front heavy with a large head and a body that tapers to a slim-wristed tail. The mouth is wide and cavernous, powerfully jawed and lined with fearsome teeth that point backwards similarly to those of a shark. If a goonch grabs hold of something, then it tends not to let go.
Goonch often grow in excess of 1 metre in length and a weight of 40kg, but individual fish may grow to double that size. A 2-metre-long catfish, weighing as much as an adult man, makes for a formidable freshwater predator, but would such a fish be able to kill a human?
The incident of 2007 attracted the attention of adventurer, biologist and angler Jeremy Wade, who researched the disappearance for the television series River Monsters. Wade also investigated similar disappearances from 1998, where a 17-year-old boy vanished while swimming and a younger child was attacked while wading, shouting that something had grabbed him before being dragged beneath the surface.
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Wade hooked and landed a goonch weighing 161lb (73kg) and surmised that a fish wouldn’t need to grow much bigger to become a potential ‘maneater’. Since the filming, in 2017, a goonch of 308lb (140kg) was caught in Bangladesh, a fish of the size that Wade was referring.
A goonch would not necessarily attempt to eat a person whole, but in the water, with body size and power, and the grip of those teeth, a human could easily be dragged under and drown.
Jeremy Wade also suggested a reason why the goonch might associate humans as potential prey. That stretch of the Kāli River is a site where Asthi Visarjan, the Hindu tradition where cremated ashes are immersed in holy water, is practiced. Funeral pyres are constructed on the water’s edge, with the burnt ashes and remains then consigned to the water in order that the soul of the deceased achieves moksha (liberation).
Perhaps, the goonch has become part of that process, only the fish cannot always discern between the dead and the living.
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Top image: PP Yoonus, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
