A woman fended off an alleged attacker by biting off his tongue and then handing it into police as evidence.
A 57-year-old French woman said she was the victim of a sexual assault at around 4am last Sunday.
Radio station Francebleu reported the women was taking her dog for a walk in Avignon, 100 km north of Marseilles, in southern France.
She said a man approached her, grabbed and forcibly kissed her. She also said the man put his hand down her trousers.
As the woman struggled, she bit off a piece of the man’s tongue, which she then kept.
After returning home, the woman and her son went to a local police station to report the crime and hand over the tongue fragment to help identify the alleged attacker.
Police subsequently arrested a Tunisian man in his thirties.
Franceblue said the man alleged he was trying to “charm” the woman and it was she who “jumped” him.
Further reports have suggested he was an illegal immigrant who will be deported regardless of the outcome of the case.
Severing parts of an alleged attacker’s anatomy has a history.
Last year, a woman in India cut off her boyfriend’s penis after claiming to have caught him trying to rape her 14-year-old daughter.
The woman, 36, had lived with her boyfriend for two years after separating from an alcoholic husband, reports.
She came home after a day working on a farm and said she caught her boyfriend “red-handed.”
”He even attacked me while I was trying to save my daughter, so I brought a knife from the kitchen and chopped off his private parts to teach him a lesson,” the woman told The Times of India.
“I have no regrets for what I did.”
Police in the Mahewaganj region of Uttar Pradesh – an area east of New Delhi – arrested the boyfriend, 32, on charges of rape under a child sexual abuse law in India.
Officers referred him for treatment since they found him in “critical” condition.