BSF team seize smuggled snake venom worth ₹24 cr near Indo-Bangladesh border

Cobra venom is used in the preparation of chemicals needed for Chemotherapy of terminally ill Cancer patients. The value of the venom is so high since it is used to treat cancer patients in China.

Published on: Feb 17, 2021, 22:54:00 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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A Border Security Force team on Wednesday seized a consignment of snake venom worth nearly ₹24 crore that was allegedly being smuggled from Bangladesh into India through the porous Indo-Bangladesh border, according to a BSF statement.

The BSF team carefully searched the entire area and found the package which when opened revealed two jars containing a powdery and crystalline substance –weighing 4 lbs. (PHOTO: BSF)

The snake venom that was seized in Raiganj area of West Bengal weighed at least 4 lbs and is suspected to be of French origin.

Based on a tip-off that snake venom was being smuggled into the country, the BSF team carried out a special operation on Tuesday at about 7.45 pm along the border.

They saw 4 people walking stealthily towards India under cover of darkness with some sort of package.

The BSF team challenged them and on sensing danger, the culprits left the package and fled towards Bangladesh. The BSF team carefully searched the entire area and found the package which when opened revealed two jars containing a powdery and crystalline substance –weighing 4 lbs. They then contacted the forest officials who said that the substance looked like Cobra venom in the powdery and crystalline form. The forest officials also added that snake venom was a very expensive substance in the international market.

The BSF personnel contacted the DFO at Balurghat to ascertain the veracity of the product. The DFO said that snake venom is normally priced at about $120 per gram if purchased officially, but in the grey market the seized amount would cost approximately ₹24 crore. The entire amount has been handed over to officials of the Forest department.

The jars had markings which read “Cobra SP – Red Dragon –Made in France – Code No- 6097”. The venom had possibly been brought in from France into areas of Chittagong in Bangladesh from where it was taken to Rangpur in Bangladesh. It is from there that the smugglers attempted to push the product into India from where it may have been taken to China.

Cobra venom is used in the preparation of chemicals needed for Chemotherapy of terminally ill Cancer patients. More information is awaited about the seized cache, the modus operandi by which it was being smuggled and the ultimate destination of the venom.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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