"He was amazed that he saw the devil in the boy sitting in front of him, fearing the devil; he threw the child into the burning oven," he claims.

When the incident occurred, Grandpa and Grandma were supposed to have taken the child at the time; their daughter, the mother of the child, was Irina Andreeva, 21, in her work.

The police, who are holding the grandfather, said the "mad man" grabbed the child from his wife who forced her out of the house and "pushed him into the oven to kill him."

Soon the wife and a woman from the neighbors rushed back inside and pulled away the child whose cries were coming from the oven.

"We managed to get him out alive," Metro quoted the ambulance driver who came to save the child as "a terrible story."

"The small patient in intensive care now, in a serious condition, is still too early to predict any expectations," said Svetlana Ospnikov, a spokeswoman for the Omsk regional health department.