The crocodile was caught 36 hours after it killed a woman in Vadodara. (Express Photo)

Over 36 hours since a team of rescuers and officials of the Vadodara forest department began an operation to catch a crocodile from the Dev river in Mahadevpura village in Waghodia taluka of Vadodara district, the 13-foot mugger finally walked towards the bait on Sunday morning.

Rescuers had set up a trap to lure the crocodile after he attacked and killed a 54-year-old woman from Mahadevpura village in Waghodia taluka, who was washing clothes on the banks of the river, on Friday.

Hemant Vadhana and his team of crocodile catchers joined the forest department team led by Kashyap Patel on Friday afternoon when the woman’s body was pulled out of the river after much struggle with the mugger.

The crocodile dragged away the woman by her leg, a major portion of which was bitten off by the mugger, during the hour-long fight with villagers who were trying to rescue the woman.

This was the third crocodile attack on humans this year and second fatal one. In May, the same crocodile dragged away another woman in a similar way near Goraj, about a kilometre away.

Vadhwana, who has rescued around 10 crocodiles from various parts of Vadodara since the onset of monsoon this year, said, “It took us over 36 hours to make him emerge from the water. We set up a bait and when he emerged, I threw the lasso around his neck and pulled him out.”

The rescuers then throw a cloth over the crocodile to block his vision and tame the aggression. The crocodile has now been handed over to the Vadodara forest department.

According to Vadhwana, the crocodile had been residing inside the river for over seven years and has fatally attacked seven persons — mostly women washing clothes on the riverbank — during the period. Officials also say that the crocodile may have turned into a man-eater and taken to attack humans due to the fact that biomedical waste is often found littered in one part of the river, close to a charitable hospital for cancer patients, about a kilometre away from Mahadevpura.

Dev River in Waghodia is known for crocodile attacks during monsoon.