(TDB) - A viral story about a python eating a drunk man in India has turned out to be a hoax – as the snake in question also stands accused of eating people in China, South Africa, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The story emerged earlier this week and rapidly went viral with tens of thousands of retweets and shares online.

The story went that a drunk man, in Attapady in the southern Indian state of Kerala, passed out by the side of the road after a drink or two too many.

A passing python (as snake’s are wont to do) constricted him and subsequently devoured him (left).

Russian state-run news outlet Pravda ran a very grave report on the incident, adding at the end that the snake had had to be killed so that the man’s body could be retrieved.

However, all was not as it appeared. The ophidian serial killer appears to have been eating its way through mankind for quite some time – each time with the featured picture attached to the sensational headline.

The snake also stands accused of swallowing a sleeping woman in Durban, South Africa, in June this year – or, then again, it may have been a 10 year old boy in 2002.

Still earlier accusations claim that the python ate another drunken man – or again perhaps just a “person of unknown gender” instead – asleep by a roadside in Indonesia after floods had hit the region a little while ago.

Other stories add that the man hunting snake has also chowed down on an “unknown man” in Quijing, China and a four year old in Malaysia.