Two held for trying to sell sand boa at Nagercoil

CHENNAI: Forest department officials in Kanyakumari district on Tuesday foiled an attempt to sell a sand boa and arrested two people in this connection.
District forest officer Vismiju Viswanathan said they received specific information that two men in the district were in possession of a sand boa and were trying to sell it. Soon, a team of officials, posing as prospective buyers, contacted the two men.They were asked to come to Kattaturai junction on the outskirts of Nagercoil, where the officials arrested the men. They were identified as S Johnraj, 29, and D Suresh, 22, both from Nagercoil. Cases have been registered against them and further investigation is on, said Viswanathan.
Field operatives of TRAFFIC, the wildlife crime detection wing of the World Wide Fund for nature – India (WWF-I), who have gathered data on the business, said trading in sand boa, a non-venomous snake which faces the threat of extinction, began in 2006 in Tamil Nadu. Slowly it spread to other states in the southern region. Now, the trade has become a major attraction for several young people in Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and newly formed Telangana, they said.
TRAFFIC officials said they had identified two websites that were openly advertising about the availability of sand boas, peacock feathers and other products. The sand boa had got undue attention and its price, quoted by the sellers is phenomenal. “Actually it does not have any medicinal properties or bring prosperity to those who possess it as is believed,” said.
Knowledge to browse internet and aware of using social media network such as ‘WhatsApp’ are the two main qualifications with which most of the modern day youth, including engineering and MBA graduates get involved in this illegal trade without realizing the repercussions, said the Forest officials. In Tamil Nadu, sand boas were mainly collected from agricultural fields. With the illegal trade spreading to northern parts of the country, adequate measures were required to protect the species from the brink of extinction, they said.