Surat: The forest department on Tuesday booked the seven persons arrested in connection with alleged cobra venom trade on charges of hunting and other sections of the Wildlife Protection Act.Range forest office (Dumas) lodged a case and produced the accused in a court which remanded them in forest department custody for two days for further investigation. Those arrested were Surat residents – Mansukh Dhinaiya (67) and Chiman Bhuva (60), and Vadodara residents – Samir Panchal (41), Praveen Shah (74), Ketan Shah (50), Makrand Kulkarni (54), and Prashant Shah (40). All were held in a raid by SOG at Dinaiya’s marriage bureau office in Laskana.Dumas range forest officer (RFO) Nitin Varmora told TOI: “As the venom was extracted from a cobra, which is included as a reptile under Part-C of Schedule-1 of the Wildlife Protection Act, all were booked for hunting and illegal trade of venom. We invoked 18 sections of the Act, as the accused are liable to get up to seven years of jail once their crime is proven.”Meanwhile, the SOG police and forest department launched the hunt for Ahmedabad-based main accused Ghanshyam Soni, who allegedly supplied the venom to Kulkarni and Prashant. The seized venom is valued at nearly Rs 5.85cr.
