New Delhi: About two years back, the state of Uttar Pradesh was abuzz with a new urban legend - muhnochwa, a face-scratching creature.
Scores of people in the state reported being attacked by a strange and brightly-lit flying object that apparently left scratch marks on their faces.
A few months after it began, the muhnochwa seemed to disappear as mysteriously as it had appeared.
Now, there is a new scare in India - calls from mobile phones that kill or make people sick.
People in the eastern state of Orissa are switching off their phones after rumours of the "devil calls" swept the state on Sunday.
The rumour in the state is that the receiver of an SMS or a phone call from an 11- to 14-digit numbers, instead of the regular 10, will fall sick or even die.
Though phone companies have said the rumour was baseless and looked more like a prank, people in Orissa have been calling up their relatives and friends in other states to warn them.
A state government spokesman has also dismissed the story as rubbish. "We investigated and found out that no one was dead nor anybody taken ill. It was all rubbish," the spokesman said.
A mobile phone user in Bhubaneswar said he had received a call early Monday that flashed an eleven-digit number. The caller warned him to switch off his mobile.
"The caller told me if I continue to receive calls on my cell I could be receiving (a) virus that could blow up my phone. Interestingly, when I called back the number, the service provider voice said no such number exists. I simply switched off the set," he said.
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