Crocodile captured from Puducherry drain

PUDUCHERRY: Forest officials captured a crocodile from a drain in Puducherry town in the early hours of Tuesday.

The crocodile, which may be less than a year old, weighed 1.35kg and was 2.3 feet long. It was hale and healthy, said forest officials.

However, they are clueless about how the crocodile reached the drain, which is not connected to any river upstream or downstream. The officials will decide whether to let the reptile in the wild or hand it over to a zoo or rescue centre after analyzing all possible options.

They erected iron grills upstream and downstream the drain from the area where the reptile was spotted by an employee of a furniture mart nearby on Monday morning. They also set traps upstream and downstream and successfully caught the reptile at 1.45am on Tuesday.

However, people who spotted the crocodile on Monday said the crocodile that was caught on Tuesday was not the one they had seen, triggering panic that there might be one more crocodile in the drain. The crocodile they had spotted was more than four feet, they argued.

The forest officials set traps upstream and downstream in the drain as a precautionary measure.

The forest department on Monday issued a public warning that a juvenile freshwater crocodile was sighted in a drain in the town limits and asked all people living near the drain to be cautious.