A resident of Bhubaneswar in eastern India got a fright recently when he spotted a deadly cobra in his toilet.

Prakash Mishra locked the door and called the Snake Helpline who sent a two-member rescue team to catch the snake.

They could hear a loud hiss whenever they approached the toilet but couldn't see the reptile.

They realised that the cobra must be hiding in a cavity beneath the pan and started digging around it.

The four-foot-long cobra emerged from a freshly dug hole and tried to warn them off by flaring its hood but before they could catch it, the snake disappeared again.

The two men persisted and managed to rescue the snake from the broken pan and released it later in a natural habitat after nearly 90 minutes.

"We hate to damage property, but the cobra would not come out. We had to break the pan to find the snake as the family was at tremendous risk," said Subhendu Mallik, founder of Snake Helpline.

Prakash Mishra, a resident of Bhubaneswar in eastern India, saw a cobra in his toilet on the night of September 14.

He locked the door and called the Snake Helpline, which sent a two-member rescue team, Lalit Mohan Panda and Durga Madhab Mohapatra, to catch the snake.

They could hear the hiss of the snake whenever they approached the toilet pan but could not see it. They realised that the cobra was hiding in a cavity beneath the pan and started digging around it.

A four-feet long venomous cobra emerged from a freshly dug hole hole and tried to warn them off by flaring its hood. But before they could catch it, the snake disappeared again.

The two men persisted and managed to rescue the snake from the broken pan and released it later in a natural habitat after nearly 90 minutes.

Subhendu Mallik, founder of Snake Helpline, said: "We hate to damage property, but the cobra would not come out. We had to break the pan to find the snake as the family was at tremendous risk."