Bhopal: Since childhood Nikhil Raut has been fascinated with reptiles, especially snakes. When he was 16 years old, he caught the first snake which was a 4-feet-long Russell’s viper, one of the most poisonous snakes in the world. “I was scared and happy at the same time. Happy because it was the first time I was rescuing a snake and scared because it could bite me,” he reminisced about his first rescue.
“I had a certain liking for snakes since childhood and that is why I got connected with Ravishankar Dongre, a snake specialist. I got trained under him and learnt everything I know of snakes from him only. Unfortunately, he died because of lack of medical aid after being bitten by a cobra. That’s when I started learning more about snakebites and spread awareness about it as well,” said Nikhil.
Having rescued more than 1,000 snakes, Nikhil has also got training in Madras Crocodile Bank Trust & Center for Herpetology on Crocodiles. “There I learnt about how to nurture their habitat, conserve them and how to generate an environment for their survival.”
Being an engineering graduate, Nikhil was always keenly interested in working for wild life and thus he joined WWF, with which he has been organising several awareness camps. “After my guru Ravishankar Dongre’s death, I realised that there was a huge lag in terms of medical facilities for snakebites. I am not talking about cities but villages and small towns. Also, the superstitions are a major cause of deaths by snakebites,” he said.
To spread awareness about false beliefs, Nikhil has made a short film of 12 minutes which will be released this month. “The short film, ‘The Fang’, is about how superstitious beliefs take life and how these saadhus and babas forge people. The complete movie took almost a year. We faced difficulty in casting and locations as we wanted it to look real and not a drama. This movie specifically tells you how people die due to superstitious beliefs,” he said.
Nikhil’s ardent love for snakes was once a problem for his family as they did not like Nikhil playing and working with snakes. “Many times, my parents would say that they will not let me enter the house. Whenever I rescued a snake, I used to first take it at my home and then leave it in either Van Vihar or in a jungle. Once a cousin visited my house when a rescued snake was in the drawing room. He saw the snake and immediately ran away. He did not enter till I removed the snake from the room and such things happened many times,” said Nikhil, laughing.
