This is the bizarre moment an animal rescue officer finds an empty snail shell choking a cobra around its body.

A few children playing at a village near Bhadrak in eastern India spotted a cobra in a bush.

The adult snake was choking with an empty snail shell wrapped around its body and was wriggling to free itself from its vicious grip.

The cobra had even injured itself while struggling and was bleeding.

The villagers made a call to well-known snake rescuer Mirza Mohd Arif, who rushed to the spot with his assistant and cameraman S K Niyaz.

Mirza caught the snake, gripped its neck firmly and broke the shell with a metal stick.

“The snake had perhaps come across the empty shell and tried to pass through a large hole in its spiral. The empty shell had wrapped itself around cobra’s neck like a ring making it difficult to breathe,” said Mirza.

“It was bizarre, I had never seen anything like that earlier, he added,” he added.

Empty shells are found abandoned in the forest when terrestrials snails die or are eaten by predators. The shells are made of calcium and hard to break.

The footage was captured on Monday (February 18).