Thai police revealed on Friday that they have been searching for 82 missing cobras from the Red Cross Snake Farm in the centre of Bangkok for the past three months.
The cobras, used to extract venom to treat snake bites, started to disappear in January, this year, said Police Lieutenant Colonel Wichien Watchirasaenglert.
The first batch of 30 snakes disappeared on January 13, a second of 32 cobras on January 21 and the last batch on February 2, he disclosed, confirming reports leaked out to the local press.
Police said they kept a lid on the news to assist their investigation.
”We’ve decided it must have been an inside job, because whoever took the snakes must have known what he was doing,” said Wichien, who speculated that the 82 cobras, worth about 30 000 baht ($790) were probably sold to restaurants as exotic meat.
The head of the Red Cross Snake Farm, a popular tourist attraction situated on Rama IV Road in the heart of Bangkok, said he had never heard of a cobra escaping the farm during his 30 years at the institution. – Sapa-DPA