3 arrested in Panvel for smuggling sand boa from Pune

Three persons were arrested by the Navi Mumbai crime branch (unit 3) in the early hours of Friday for allegedly smuggling a sand boa from Pune and selling it in Panvel.

According to the police, Arbaz Shaikh, 24, Sagar Shinde, 22, both residents of Pune and Shasha Ali Pathan, 22, of Raigad, illegally caught the reptile in a forest in Pune and took it to Panvel to sell on Thursday night.

Shatrughna Mali, senior inspector of crime branch, said, “We received information that a few people had entered the city with an endangered animal and accordingly deployed our officials at different places in plain clothes. Within a few hours, one of our teams spotted three suspicious-looking people in Panvel and intercepted them. One of them carried a black bag with him. Our team checked the bag and found a sand boa and an electronic weighing machine inside it. They arrested them on the spot.”

The police booked the accused under Sections 420 and 511 of the IPC and Sections 51 and 52 of the Wild Life Protection Act, 1972. They later handed over the sand boa to the forest department after taking permission from the court.

“In the past, we came across such cases wherein criminals sold sand boa to people for anything between ₹1Cr and ₹2Cr. Some people believe that a person becomes wealthy if he keeps a sand boa at home and hence such criminals keep smuggling it to sell in the city,” he said.