BHUBANESWAR : State forest officials on Saturday nabbed six persons including a woman for allegedly trying to sell over 1.5 litre snake venom in the Capital city. The lead was provided by Suvendu Mallick of Snake Helpline, who received an information that some persons had come to the city and were looking for customers to sell the venom. He alerted the officials of Bhubaneswar forest range office.
They contacted the kingpin of the racket by posing as customers and expressed their interest to purchase the venom. Assistant Conservator of Forest Prashant Kumar Panda then formed four teams, who in civilian dress went to buy the venom from the persons at Acharya Vihar on Saturday morning.
“They took the officials to Station Square and later to Forest Park area where they handed them over two bottles (750 ml each) of venom. The peddlers were immediately arrested,” said Panda. The six have been identified as Hrushnakar Padhiary (30) of Sahadevkhunta, Biswa Pradhan (30) of Sohela, Suraj Dash (21) of Balangir, Sanjay Mohanty (43) of Jaleswar, Shyamalendu Nayak (30) of Hulurisingha and Jayasmita Nayak of Balasore district.
6 held with over 1.5 ltr snake venom
Forest department sources said, the seized venom would be sent to the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) or any other laboratory to ascertain the species of snake it extracted from. Snake venom apart from being used in anti-snakebite drugs is also an active ingredient in many pharmaceuticals. It is also used in narcotics, where it sells at several lakhs of rupees for just a gram, Mallick said.