A member of the Jehovah's Witnesses religion, who had proclaimed himself as God, set himself on fire on Monday in the Moscow region, local police said.
The incident took place in the village of Nakhabino 33 kilometers (20.5 miles) outside Moscow on Monday after the man bought fuel, poured it onto himself and set himself ablaze. He is in critical condition with over 70 percent of his body burned, police said.
“According to the son of the injured man, his 43-year-old father had been a member of the Jehovah's Witnesses and considered himself as God,” the police also reported.
Investigators are probing into the cause of the man’s suicide attempt.
The Jehovah's Witnesses, which has some seven million followers worldwide and over 200,000 in Russia, have already been banned in a number of Russian regions and in some former Soviet republics.
The Jehovah's Witnesses branch in the Russian capital was dissolved by a district court ruling in 2004, but the European Court of Human Rights declared the decision illegal in 2011.
The religion is banned in China, North Korea, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and other countries.
