Indian held

NEW DELHI: An Indian man has been arrested for selling dried monitor lizard penises online as a rare root plant believed to bring good luck, Indian forest department officials said on Friday.

The news comes days after Indian and British investigators said they had uncovered a scam in which Indian internet retailers were passing off the lizard parts as the plant, known as Hatha Jodi.

The monitor lizard is protected under the Indian Wildlife Act. Officials believe the arrested man, Kalki Krishnan, was sourcing the parts from central India’s Madhya Pradesh state. "We have made seizures of the monitor lizard penises and sent them to the lab for tests. We will also ask the court for the arrested man’s custody to further our investigations," a divisional forest officer, H V Girish, told AFP.

Other banned wildlife items were also seized from Krishnan, an official at the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau told the Hindustan Times. According to the report by UK and Indian investigators, apart from India, the fake plant roots are being shipped to addresses across the world.

MEXICO CITY: Mexico may have a problem with violence, but its government says it is not the second most violent country in the world, as US President Donald Trump has claimed on Twitter. The Mexican foreign ministry pointed instead to places like Honduras, Venezuela, Belize, Colombia and Brazil as countries with higher murder rates, in a statement released late on Thursday.