GHAZIABAD: It’s not often that the one behind bars has a chilling effect on cops sitting outside. In movies, yes, not quite in reality.
On Wednesday evening, an “inmate” whose presence no one was aware of rustled and made its presence known, sending the entire posse of cops at Ghaziabad’s Madhuban Bapudham police station into a tizzy. Around 6.30pm, the cops were preparing for a change in shift when cries of “snake, snake” from the sweeper froze them in their seats.
There it was — a jet black king cobra coiled up in one corner of the police station. As people tried different tricks to move it away — some with sounds, others with their sticks — the snake got into a defensive position. It raised its hood, hissed a few times and slithered towards another corner where some had thrown disposable tea cups.
“None of us had noticed the snake crawling into the police station. We would have even given it a miss had the sweeper not shouted and alerted us. As we tried to chase it away, the snake entered one of the lockups. Fortunately, there was no inmate there,” said Shailendar Singh, the SHO of Madhuban Bapudham police station.
When all else failed, the cops reached out to the forest department. According to foresters, the snake was 1.5m long and a juvenile king.
“We reached the police station within 15 minutes of getting a distress call. The police station is in a forested area. So, it’s not unusual for a snake to enter the premises. We rescued the snake from the lockup and released it into the Dasna jungle,” said Vikas Sintoria, the forest range officer.
The
cobra was unlikely to have found a place safer than the police station. According to Singh, it escaped after being chased by a group of people from a nearby area.
Kaveri Rana Bhardwaj, an animal activist, said her group rescues around 500 snakes every monsoon.
“Poisonous species include the monocled cobra, spectacled cobra, and kraits. To avoid such intruders in houses and residential buildings, a chemical called phorate can be sprinkled around the boundaries,” she said. “I saw a video of the cobra inside the police station. The snake raised its hood because it felt threatened. They can raise a third of their bodies if they feel they are in danger.”
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