Raiganj/Jalpaiguri, June 16: After Bankura, Rampurhat, Burdwan and Midnapore, arachnophobia has gripped north Bengal where large hairy spiders were killed in the past few days.

Ukilpara in North Dinajpur is one of the areas where residents, in a fit of house-cleaning ,beat out mattresses, turned over furniture and searched every nook and corner to flush out the “remaining” arachnids. They had already killed one.

The hue and cry prompted the forest department to launch an awareness campaign, to urge people not to panic. The department is yet to identify the species to which the spider belongs.

The district health authorities, who are in possession of one of the dead spiders, will send the specimen to the School of Tropical Medicine in Calcutta for identification.

“This morning when I saw a large spider in the corridor, I promptly killed it,” said Subrata Lahiri, a resident of Ukilpara.

Fear also drove Debjoy Mishra to kill the “black, hairy spider” that was often spotted in his house in Jalpaiguri. The Mishra family had never tried to get rid of it until they read about people “who were stung by spiders”.

District forest officials, who were surprised to find Mishra at their office this morning with the “dead tarantula”, have failed to identify the species. “We don’t know if it is a poisonous spider,” they said.

said Udit Narayan Srivastava, the beat officer.