Rokkam Kiran Kumar, a middle-aged man from the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant area, catches at least 10 snakes a day, taking calls from alarmed households in the suburbs of the city. Popularly known as ‘Snake Kiran’, he is equally comfortable in handling all kinds of snakes, including the most venomous ones, and rattling off about their dangers to worried people encountering the serpents.
Last weekend, he caught an Indian cobra along with 10 baby cobras in the Old Gajuwaka area, opposite RK Hospital, at a car wash place. It was all in a day’s work. “When the call came late at night, I was told three baby snakes were found at a corner. I wasn’t expecting a cobra then. After I reached there with my team in the early hours next morning, we saw a big Indian cobra and many baby snakes around,” says Kumar. He deftly handled the snake with a cleft stick, telling people gathered around how snakes do not have it in them to take revenge, even as the hooded cobra hissed and made attempts to strike at him.
“Snakes retaliate only when provoked. They attack only when you go too close to them. Otherwise, they first try to just slither away,” he says and adds: “Cobras are one of the ‘big four’ venomous kinds in the country. But the problem is people are so scared that they tend to kill it rather than alerting certified snake catchers and helping them release it in the wild.” Over a span a 15 years, Kumar has rescued and released about 17,000 snakes and claims to have made a name for himself in the Limca Book of Records. In the past three to four years, he has seen large spikes in callouts and has been warning residents not to try and tackle the serpents by themselves. “I get at least 15 calls every day, mostly from places like Simhachalam, Mathurawada, Kommadi, Visakhapatnam Steel Plant and HPCL. The loss of vegetation on the city’s hillsides and rapid urbanisation is wiping off the habitats of the reptiles. The snakes are creeping into human habitations through drains,” says Kumar who also got calls from neighbouring regions of Kakinada and Kadiyum.
Rise in conflict
While snakebites constitute the biggest man-animal conflict in the country, it is, shockingly, paid very little attention. According to official estimates from the National Crime Records Bureau, deaths caused due to snake bites stand at 8,554. However, independent studies indicate the number to be at least 50,000 — which is half the deaths across the world. In India, there are about 270 species of snakes in India, out of which the four most dangerous snakes include the Indian cobra, Russell’s viper, saw-scaled viper and the common krait.
Recently, at Sector 6 of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, Kumar rescued a Russell’s viper after he got a call from a family who found the snake in their garden. “They initially thought it was a python,” recalls Kumar. When he reached the spot, Kumar found himself face-to-face with a Russell’s viper. “Vipers are tricky to handle. They are extremely agile and have the swiftest moments with a tendency to tuck their head into their coils, making it difficult to locate the head,” says Kumar, who formed the Snake Savers Society Visakhapatnam four years ago with an 18-member team.
First catch
Kumar does not hail from one of the traditional snake catching communities. He just took to it. When he asked about his first catch, he says, “The first memory of my catching a snake was as a 14-year-old teenager, I found the traffic coming to a standstill near Malkapuram because of a big snake,” he adds. Kumar bravely rescued the snake with bare hands and left it in the wild. That incident was reported in the vernacular dailies and that gave him a big boost.
While Kumar is the ‘108 emergency service’ when it comes to catching snakes in the district, he had faced his share of criticism in the initial years from animal activists for handling the snakes without expertise. “I used to catch snakes with my bare hands and sometimes that was not a correct way to handle the reptiles. I have studied and researched on this and now, I ensure that the reptiles are handled safely and released into the wild,” he says.
Even after so many years of his service, Kumar gets paid a pittance for all the handwork. While on many occasions his services has been recognised by the District Administration and some corporates, he feels it is of little help. He is trying to reach out to the Greater Visakha Municipal Corporation so he can procure a rescue vehicle, a necessity at a time when man-animal conflict is on the rise.
Kumar can be reached at 9849140500.