Rescue
Moving a wandering mugger back home.
Every monsoon, a handful of Vadodara's crocodiles ride the rising water past the riverbank and into the city. What happens next is one of the calmest, most practised rescue operations anywhere in the world — and it starts with knowing what to do the moment you see one.
If you see a mugger, do this
01
Stay calm
A mugger on land is disoriented, not hunting. It wants to be left alone far more than it wants to interact with you.
02
Keep your distance
Move calmly away and keep others — especially children and pets — back. There is no safe way to approach or corner it yourself.
03
Don't touch or move it
Handling a mugger safely takes training and the right equipment. Untrained handling is the single most common cause of injury on both sides.
04
Call for help
Contact the Wildlife Rescue Team or Gujarat Forest Department using the emergency panel on this site and let a trained crew take it from there.
The craft
A calm, practised routine.
There is a particular kind of phone call that only exists in Vadodara. It comes at two in the morning, and it begins: "Sir, there is a crocodile in the well." The people who answer it — forest officers and volunteer rescuers — have turned croc retrieval into a calm, practised craft.
The method is gentleness perfected: a soft rope, a strip of tape for the jaws (a mugger's bite is ferocious, but the muscles that open the mouth are famously weak), a cloth over the eyes, and the animal goes still — an old reptile trick, like covering a parrot's cage. Then a short truck ride, a quiet bank, a loosened rope, and a splash.
No other city on Earth runs this service at this scale, this casually. In Vadodara it isn't heroism. It's municipal plumbing for the world's most ancient water problem.
The monsoon chapter
When the river rises, the city makes way.
Every July, the Vishwamitri swells beyond its banks — and its oldest residents drift out with it. What follows is Vadodara's strangest civic ritual: the polite return of crocodiles, one rescue at a time.
Every June
The water climbs
Pre-monsoon showers wake the river. Muggers ride the new currents into flooded culverts and storm drains — the city's plumbing becomes their highway.
2019 · The famous flood
Crocodiles on Ajwa Road
When record rains drowned the streets, muggers appeared on flooded roads, in society parking lots and beside a school gate. The photos went around the world. Nobody was harmed — the city simply waited, and the water took them home.
Every season
The rescue crews roll out
Forest department teams and volunteer rescuers answer midnight calls — a croc in a well, a courtyard, a cattle shed. Rope, tape, a calm hand over the eyes, and a ride back to the river. No drama, no harm, both sides home by dawn.
October
The truce resumes
The river settles, the banks dry, and the muggers reclaim their favourite basking spots — as if the whole excursion had been mildly embarrassing for everyone involved.
Gujarat Forest Department
The lead agency for wildlife rescue in Vadodara. Trained officers assess each call, coordinate the retrieval, and decide where and when a crocodile is released back into the river system.
Volunteer rescuers
A network of experienced local volunteers works alongside the Forest Department, often first on scene for a call. Many have handled the same individual crocodiles for years and recognise them on sight.
Read next
Conservation →
Why Vadodara's mugger population matters, and what protecting it actually looks like.