HYDERABAD: People living along the banks of the Musi river here were in for a Sunday morning surprise when they found a baby crocodile lolling in the grass. They reported it to the police, who advised them that since the reptile had broken no law, they should take it to Nehru Zoo instead.
The Musi, a tributary of the Krishna river, flows more like a sewage drain than a river.
Locals tied the crocodile’s mouth with a plastic cord and put it on a cart.
Hurried calls were made to the Telangana Forest Department, whose officials were just as surprised. They guessed that the baby must have lost its way from Osman Sagar reservoir, popularly known as the Gandipet reservoir, which feeds the Musi in Hyderabad.
In 2010, a fully grown crocodile was found at a construction site near Madhapur Outer Ring Road here in a 10-feet deep pit for construction of a cellar. After heavy rains and flood water from Gandipet, construction workers who were washing clothes near the pit found the crocodile. It took more than a week for forest officials to rescue it.