A police sergeant in Nigeria's Delta State has been arrested for alleged involvement in a plot with some faceless persons to swindle the proprietor of a hotel in Effurun, near Warri. There was pandemonium in Warri, Thursday, following a false claim by the group that a lady who lodged in the hotel on Valentine's Day with a purported lover was turned into a python. A version of the report said the proprietor of the hotel died after a policeman guarding the hotel shot dead the purported snake, which photograph was spread round the twin-cites of Warri and Effurun on phone. But for the intervention of the army and police, the hotel would have been razed by angry residents, who thought the story was true and laid siege to the hotel on Thursday. The sergeant attached to the Ekpan Police Station, Ekpan is reportedly assisting the police in their investigations to unmask the other members of the gang. The hotel proprietor, who commented on the incident on Friday, said, “When I heard of the news, I was shocked. I started receiving calls from different parts of Nigeria and abroad. I had to go to Delta Broadcasting Service, DBS, Warri, to tell the people that nothing like that happened. It was the handiwork of competitors who see Hotel Excel as a threat.” He said it was not true that a lady turned into a snake in his hotel, adding, “For the avoidance of doubt, the so-called strange creature was created in Indonesia in 2010 and could be found on the internet. This is what the primitive competitors used in blackmailing us by telling people that a lady turned into a snake in the hotel.”