Muhnochwa. The face-scratcher. That was the name villagers in rural eastern Uttar Pradesh gave to a night terror in the summer of 2002. It flew, it flashed coloured lights, and it left people wounded. On 7 August an intelligence team at Sitapur built a decoy of their own and watched a flash of light descend close to it three times. The fear turned deadly, with a lynching in Sultanpur district and police firing on a mob at Barabanki. The Quint later placed it beside the Monkey-man of Delhi and the 2017 braid-chopping panic.
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