Cops have launched an investigation into a series of mysterious assaults on crippled astrophysicist Stephen Hawking.
The probe reportedly began after the author of the best seller “A Brief History of Time” was left stranded in his wheelchair in the garden of his country home last summer on the hottest day of the year.
Hawking, 62, who lives in Cambridge, England, suffered severe heatstroke and sunburn.
More recently, he was found to have bruises on his body, London’s Daily Mirror says.
The paper reports that Hawking’s three children, and the nurses who have cared for him, fear he’s the victim of somebody with “Munchausen syndrome by proxy,” a disorder in which the sufferers harm others to draw attention to themselves.
Detectives want to question Hawking, who is now in a hospital recovering from an unrelated bout of pneumonia.
They also want to grill his wife, Elaine, 53, and others close to the scientist.
“The family are worried sick,” one source told the Mirror. “They’ve been suspicious for some time someone has been harming Stephen.” The children, who are from Hawking’s first marriage, “are desperate to stop it, but don’t know what to do because he refuses to admit it,” the source said.
The multimillionaire scientist is paralyzed by motor neurone disease and needs round-the-clock care. He was diagnosed with the disease at the age of 21 while a student at Cambridge University, where he still works as a professor of mathematics. He speaks with the aid of a computerized voice box.
It’s the second police probe of alleged abusive behavior toward Hawking in four years.
In 2000, cops probed unexplained injuries to Hawking after he went to the hospital several times for a broken wrist, gashes on his face and a cut lip.
They dropped their inquiries after Hawking refused to make a complaint or cooperate.
When they showed up at his house to interview the scientist and his wife in separate rooms, he threatened to sue for harassment, the Mirror says.
Hawking met Elaine when she cared for him as a nurse. Her then-husband made the voice box that Hawking uses. In 1990, he stunned the world when he dumped his wife of 26 years for Elaine.
Hawking’s 1988 best seller brought him world fame for its plain-language explanation of the origin of the universe and was turned into a movie.