When a fisherman found a beautiful doll floating in the sea days after a solar eclipse in Indonesia, he thought it was an angel.

Pardin, 21, rescued it from the water and took it home, where his mother took care of it like a real human, dressing it every day in a different blouse and hijab and sitting in a chair.

Word spread in the small village on Banggai island off central Sulawesi with embellishments added to the story too, such as that the ‘angel child’ was found stranded and crying, according to local media.

Many people in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, believe solar eclipses like the one on March 12 this year are spiritual.

But when the story reached local police, they punctured the idea that this blow-up doll was from heaven.

‘So it was checked by one of our team. It was a sex toy,’ the area’s police chief Heru Pramukarno said.

He said police took the doll away to avoid any potential controversy.