After 3 years since the last reported case of Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC) in 2010 in the United States, a 3-year old baby in India suffered from repeated bursting into flames without any source of combustion.

Based on data, there are only 200 cases of SHC in the world over the past 300 years and the latest now is the case of an Indian baby when his mother rushed him to hospital on August 8, 2013.

The SHC case of baby boy ‘Rahul’ started when he was nine days old, and from then on, the baby has caught fire three times more and now he is being treated for burn injuries at the Kilpauk Medical College (KMC) hospital in the southern city of Chennai.

There is no complete explanation for SHC but some 200 such cases have been reported over the last three centuries. There is not cure, except continuous treatment for the burns, according to Dr Jayaraman, the former head of the burns unit at KMC.

“20 years ago, we saw a similar case – of a 23-year-old man – but it went undocumented. Several theories of SHC do the rounds but they are vague and not backed by scientific proof. There is no special cure… it can be treated like a regular burn injury,” he The Times of India.

Dr R Narayana Babu, head of the paediatrics department at KMC, says “the body burns spontaneously due to combustible gases emitting from the patient’s body, without any external source of ignition. Clothes and other things nearby that are inflammable may also catch fire.”

Though medical doctors consider SHC as a very rare medical condition, still they cannot clearly explain why a human body could promptly emit combustible gas.

There are many hypothesis that attempt to explain the SHC which includes natural explanations, supernatural and biblical.

Natural explanations include: intestinal conversion of food into methane by methanogens which when released through the pores of the skin can catch fire when triggered by various sources (e.g., silk cloth generating static electricity); the production of abnormally concentrated gas or raised levels of blood alcohol might cause spontaneous ignition; relating to health and lifestyle factors (e.g. smoking, not consuming adequate levels of water, etc.); and involved an external source of ignition (e.g., the victim was drunk and dropped a cigarette).

On the other hand, spiritualist and paranormal experts theorize that the ‘power of the mind’ of a person has something to do with the SHC, or the spontaneous burning could have done by malevolent beings.

Religious people interpret Bible passages (such as Numbers 11:1) to be indicative of spontaneous human combustion.

Despite these theories about SHC, medical doctors are trying to give their best explanation about this human combustion phenomena.