KUMUD JENAMANI
Jamshedpur, Nov 7: A 52-year-old woman was caught with over a dozen boxes containing snakes, chameleons, spiders and beetles from a Delhi-bound train at Tatanagar station, triggering sensation among the railway police circle.
Identified as Devi Chandra, who is originally a resident of Pune was travelling from Nagaland by changing different trains and was finally caught by the railway police at Tatanagar after she had boarded Delhi-bound Neelachal Express at Hijli station in Bengal.
Revealing the breakthrough, inspector Sanjay Kumar Tiwari of RPF, Tatanagar said that they caught the woman from a general compartment in the Neelachal Express with the boxes after being tipped off by the RPF of the Kharagpur railway division last night.
“As the boxes that the lady passenger was carrying along contained snakes, chameleons, spiders and beetles of rare species, we seized them all and brought her to the RPF post, where we got the creatures examined by pressing a couple of wildlife experts. Having got it confirmed that the seized consignment was of high value and was being smuggled to an undisclosed destination that we arrested the passenger, ” said Tiwari while talking to lagatar24.com.
He said there were in all 26 snakes, 12 chameleons, nine beetles and an unspecified number of spiders. He pointed out the wildlife experts claimed all the snakes were highly poisonous.
The RPF inspector said having verified the address of the lady passenger, they handed over her to the forest department officials for further investigation and necessary action.
The woman is learnt to have told the railway police that a man had assigned her the job of carrying the boxes from a place in Nagaland to Delhi for Rs 8,000 only. But the railway police suspect the woman hiding the facts given the kind of species of snakes, chameleons and other insects.
The railway police suspect that the snakes, chameleons and other insects might have been collected from the hilly terrains in the northeastern states and they have a high value in the international market, some gang of smugglers might have used the woman as a carrier.
The railway police have already checked the cellphone of the woman and passed on the contact number of the smugglers to the forest department officials for further investigation.
