HYDERABAD: People living along the banks of the Musi river in Hyderabad were in for a Sunday morning surprise when they found a crocodile lolling in the grass. They reported it to the police, who advised them that since the croc had broken no law, it had better be taken to the Nehru Zoo instead.
It was only a baby croc but enough to cause a sensation in the Azampura locality by which the Musi, a tributary of the Krishna river, flows more like a sewage drain than a river. It’s rare to see any fish in the river let alone a crocodile.
Discovering the reptile basking in the sun, local people tied its mouth with a plastic cord and put it on a cart to the police station in Malakpet.
Hurried calls were made to the Telangana Forest Department, whose officials were just as surprised. They hazarded a guess that the baby croc must have lost its way from the Osman Sagar reservoir, popularly known as the Gandipet reservoir, which feeds the Musi in Hyderabad.
However, experienced wildlifers said this was not the first time that a crocodile was found in and around Hyderabad. In 2010, a fully grown crocodile was found at a construction site near the Madhapur Outer Ring Road. A 10-feet deep pit had been dug for construction of a cellar. There was a heavy rains and flood water from the Gandipet flew into the construction site. Construction workers who were washing clothes near the pit found the crocodile. It took more than a week for forest officials to rescue the reptile.
Asked whether the baby croc was washed down from the crocodile sanctuary the upstream tributary of the Manjeera, an official said the reptile was more likely a resident of the Gandipet reservoir.
The Manjeera sanctuary was established in 1974 to conserve mugger crocodiles, which had reached the threshold of extinction at that time. The croc breeding programme proved very successful and today there are 400-600 crocodiles in the sanctuary.