Four snake charmers in police net

Surojit Mahalanobis / TNN / Oct 11, 2005, 00:56 IST

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They were arrested near Videocon Tower for possessing 27 reptiles without valid "ownership certificates".

NEW DELHI: Four snake charmers were arrested on Sunday by Delhi Police at Bela Shakti temple near Videocon Tower in Jhandewalan for possessing 27 reptiles without valid "ownership certificates".
On a tip-off, about their congregation at the temple just two days before Navaratri, by the volunteers of Maneka Gandhi's People for Animals (PFA), Paharganj sub-inspector Maruti Rao acted quickly with a few constables and took in possession 27 reptiles comprising three saw-scaled vipers, nine cobras, seven red-sand boa constrictors, six rat snakes, one black-head royal snake and one desert monitor lizard.
Snake parts, bones were also seized from the saperas. The reptiles are listed in the red book of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Fauna (IUCN) under threatened category. On Monday the saperas were presented before Pahargunj Metropolitan Magistrate Alok Agarwal under Delhi Police Act sections 73, 78 and 99.
Realising police goofed at categorising the case, magistrate Agarwal transferred it to the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate at Tees Hazari district courts, sent the reptiles to the PFA for interim care and remanded the foursome to judicial custody till Friday.

The PFA, which doesn't have an infrastructure to take care of the deadly serpents, deposited the reptiles to its associate Wildlife SOS' 24-hour Snake Rescue Centre. At Tees Hazari Friday it was all confusion for the wildlife officials, who were chasing the case to invoke Wildlife Protection Act 1972.
Usually the designated court of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) Manoj Jain adjudicates in wildlife cases. Both the CMM and ACMM Manoj Jain were on leave in the second half on Friday. The case was sent to the court of another ACMM Madhu Jain, who was having a heavy rush for the day.

ACMM Madhu Jain extended the judicial remand of the accused snake-charmers till October 10 and sent the case back to the designated court of ACCM Manoj Jain. To the traditional snake-charmers the Goddess evidently was not happy, said wildlife officials.
Their ambition to show-case the reptiles and fetch fortune was met with damp squib, as they flouted four WPA provisions, for illegally possessing the animals, not feeding them properly, causing injuries by extracting teeth unscientifically and exposing them to risks both for them and festive people.
"The monitor lizard falls under Part II of the Schedule I and the cobras and ratsnakes under Part II Schedule II of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and have been accorded the highest protection under the Act. Others come under Schedule IV," officials said.
On the fate of the saperas, officials said, "Their offence generally invites imprisonment for three to seven years and fine upto Rs 25,000 in each case." Conservationists in Wildlife SOS, Jose Louise and Kartick Satyanarayan, said, "The reptiles are in bad condition.
Some are severely dehydrated. The cobras and vipers fangs have been removed by the snake-charmers, some may even have developed gangrene in mouth. Under such condition snakes cannot eat, and they die of starvation." Wildlife department and the NGO were surprised at the snake-charmers' ability to possess the vipers.
Said Jose, "We have caught innumerable deadly cobras with enormous fangs and hood from homes in concretised localities such as Greater Kailash, Vasant Kunj, JNU Campus, Rohini and other localities. But Vipers in Delhi is something unusual.
Vipers are lethally poisonous desert snakes. A grown up adult is hardly 1.5 feet long, has one active fang and another hidden, which comes out soon after the first is removed.
It doesn't have a hood, is a very unpretentious animal, bites in an electrical speed inducing pain but remains subdued after it, in wait for the prey to die. The process of bite and death takes about a minute. It's surprising they caught these vipers too."

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