Woman arrested in train with snakes, spiders & chameleons worth Rs 50 cr

A woman travelling on the Nilanchal Express was stopped and her boxes searched by the Railway Protection Force (RPF). What came out of the boxes could give anyone the chills - an assortment of rare snakes, chameleons and spiders.

The woman, identified as Devi Chandra from Pune in an IANS report, was travelling in the general compartment of the train when she was stopped at the Tatanagar station in Jharkhand.

The boxes she carried with her contained 28 snakes - including sand boas, albino pythons, ball pythons and red pythons - apart from chameleons, beetles, and spiders .


The RPF had to call snake catchers to take reptiles out of the bag. The total worth of the contraband was more than Rs 50 crore.

The report quoted RPF in-charge S.K. Tiwari as saying that the venom from some of the creatures was being used in making intoxicants.

The woman reportedly confessed during interrogation that she was just acting as a carrier for a person in Nagaland in exchange for a sum of Rs 8000.

She reached Guwahati by train from Nagaland and then reached Howrah, from where she took a train to Delhi. Raids are being held to arrest the accused.