He's not a Potterhead and doesn't know Parseltongue, the language of serpents in Harry Potter's world. But, this Hazaribagh man, since 2008, has caught and rescued 1,000 snakes, a feat even forest department officials appreciate.

Murari Singh (44) is a Hindi journalist and wildlife enthusiast. But, he is famous for catching snakes and releasing them in the wild, a skill that has earned him numerous fans in monsoon when the reptiles slither inside homes and public buildings.

This monsoon, Murari has already caught 25 snakes and released them safely in Hazaribagh Lake, Canary Hills or Kadma forests.

So, how did it all start? Murari, a postgraduate in Hindi Vinoba Bhave University, said besides literature, he loved wildlife from childhood.

"I pondered how snakes were almost always feared or reviled. In 2008, I got the chance to team up with Satya Prakash, a noted wildlife expert and president of conservation outfit Neo Human Foundation, in doing a survey of snakes in Hazaribagh. We identified 25 species of snakes in Hazaribagh. That's when my interest in rescuing them grew," he said.

If a snake strays into human habitation, people are so scared they kill it. "That pained me. I decided to rescue them safely and release them away from humans. It became my life's mission," he said.

A self-taught snake catcher, Murari said: "I didn't want to be foolhardy, I have a family, after all." He read books and browsed the Internet on differences between poisonous and non-poisonous snakes by their appearance and characteristics, so as to understand how to handle a harmless, non-poisonous water or tree snake or a deadly viper, krait or cobra.

If a snake is non-poisonous, Murari catches it with bare hands. For poisonous ones, Murari devised an ingenious idea. He uses a 2.5-inch and 2-feet-long pipe with one end connected with a big bag and forced the snake to enter the pipe. Often, the snake is so scared and looking for an escape that it rushes to the pipe mistaking it for a hole, and gets trapped in the bag. Later, Murari unseals the bag and releases the snake in the wild. "Releasing it should be done carefully as it is angry by then," he cautioned.

Forest officer Gopal Chandra said Murari helped the department a lot. "We felicitated him in 2012," he said.

Now, he is considered such an authority on reptiles that Sadar Hospital doctors call him to identify if a snakebite needs antivenin. "Poisonous snakes bite deeply, non-poisonous ones don't," he said.

Businessman Antu Jain, who resides in Imli Kothi locality, took Murari's help recently. "I called up the forest department when a water snake came out and they gave me Murari's number," said Jain.

Asking people not to panic and not to kill snakes, Murari has a simple advice. "Call me on 9431155458," he said.