Bhubaneswar, Oct. 22: Forest officials today arrested six persons and seized from them 600ml of snake venom, which, it is being suspected, was drawn from King Cobras.

The officials of the city forest division arrested the accused from a hotel at Old Station. Samples of the venom have been sent to a governmentlaboratory in Mumbai for testing.

An official said all the accused had reached Bhubaneswar by train last morning to get a customer for the venom.

Acting on a tip off from a prospective customer the accused had contacted, the police arrested the culprits.

“Prima facie evidence suggests that the liquid kept in a plastic jar is snake venom. During our interrogation, we found that they had collected it from snake charmers of Jamshedpur,” said range officer of the Mancheswar forest range Ashok Mishra.

The accused were identified as Dhirendra Kumar, Dharmendra Kumar, Sankar Kumar, Om Prakash Singh, Prabin Kumar Singh — all natives of Bihar and Bhrugunath Singh, who hails from Bengal.

While Bhrugunath claimed to be working as a safety officer with the National Thermal Power Corporation in Bihar, the others said they were businessmen from Bihar.

Sources in the forest department said the cost of the seized venom could be around Rs 1 crore if it was really drawn from King Cobra.

“Though the Western Ghats are known for sizeable population of King Cobra, presence of these snakes has also been reported from the Eastern Ghats forests. It might be possible that the snake charmers collected the venom from the forests of the Eastern Ghats,” said a senior forest official.

A single King Cobra is capable of delivering venom ranging from 200mg to 7ml, which indicates that the seized venom was collected from a number of snakes.

The venom of King Cobra consists of neurotoxins and some other compounds.

A forest official said the snake venom was primarily used for manufacturing of anti-venom.

“To prepare anti-venom, the venom is first injected into a host body such as a horse or sheep to produce anti-bodies. As King Cobras are placed under Schedule II of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, its venom is considered to be highly precious,” said a forest official.