In a first-of-its-kind incident, villagers in Raipur bade a tearful farewell to a 130-year-old crocodile on Tuesday. Fondly known as 'Gangaram', the crocodile was given a proper funeral by the villagers. About 500 villagers took out the funeral procession and performed the last rites.

The residents of Bawa Mohtara village in Bemetara district, Chhattisgarh, worshipped the reptile as their protector. On the day of his death, the villagers did not cook food out of grief. The 3.4 metre-long crocodile was found dead on Tuesday in the village pond after which locals informed the local forest department.

As per reports from news agencies, the village sarpanch Mohan Sahu, along with the villagers, has decided to set up a memorial on the pond's bank where Gangaram has been buried.

"The villagers had so much affection for the reptile that many of them did not even cook food the day it died. Locals had long back named it ''Gangaram''. They used to worship it as a deity and the protector of the village," Sahu said.

Sahu further added that the villagers would regularly bathe in the pond but the reptile would never hurt anybody. "In the past, the crocodile had crawled over to some nearby villages a couple of times and we had to bring it back to the pond," the sarpanch told news agency PTI.

The animal which had lived over a century, and weighed about 250 kg died of natural causes as per Bemetara's sub-divisional officer of forest R K Sinha.