Odisha Orangutan Rescue Highlights Rising Exotic Primate Smuggling Network In India
· Free Press Journal
The discovery of five baby orangutans, native to Indonesia, in an Odisha forest earlier this week is not an isolated incident, but another indication of the huge demand for exotic apes and monkeys in India’s pet trade.
Information obtained through the Right to Information Act (RTI) shows that Customs officials at Mumbai and Bengaluru airports seized at least 30 gibbons, tamarins, marmosets and doucs being trafficked from Thailand and Malaysia in 16 cases in 2024 and 2025 alone.
Visit truewildgame.online for more information.
Chennai has also emerged as a hotspot for primate smuggling, with multiple cases reported over the past seven years.
The Odisha case is not the first instance of a trafficked orangutan being found in India. In November 2024, the Maharashtra forest department recovered a rare orangutan from a flat in Dombivli.
In July 2020, a veterinarian confirmed the presence of a baby orangutan in a house in Mumbai’s Agripada area.
Primate trafficking cases
In February 2023, four Chennai police personnel were suspended for allegedly taking bribes to allow a gang of traffickers to escape.
The gang was carrying eight orangutans trafficked from Southeast Asia to Bengaluru and transporting them by road to Chennai.
In January 2023, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) officials found a Yaki monkey, an ape native to Indonesia, caged inside a toilet at a Bengaluru house.
In September last year, Thane police arrested a Bengaluru resident while he was allegedly delivering two baby gibbons. The animals had reportedly been obtained from a Chennai resident who had arrived in Mumbai from Bangkok.
Around the same time, a baby gibbon was found swinging from trees and electrical wires in North Chennai after escaping from a house where it was being kept as a pet. It was later rescued by Tamil Nadu forest officials.
Just last month, actor Vikram was seen playing with a lar gibbon that had reportedly been trafficked from Southeast Asia through the Myanmar-India land border. Customs officials say many baby primates brought into India by air do not survive the journey.
5 Baby Orangutans Found In Odisha Forest, Smuggling SuspectedConcerns over exotic pet trade
Baby primates are coveted as pets by the rich and famous because they resemble human babies, said Chennai-based wildlife activist Shravan Krishnan.
“Additionally, American movies like Dunston Checks In have created an impression that keeping monkeys as pets is cute. It is cruel and problematic at multiple levels,” he said.
The trade is particularly brutal because poachers often have to kill the mother to capture a baby, Shravan said. Apes such as gibbons spend most of their lives high in trees, and human habitation cannot replicate their natural ecosystem, leaving them stressed.
“This is a reason why these apes don’t breed in captivity. These animals can only be tamed, never domesticated,” he said.
There is also a significant risk of zoonotic diseases spreading from primates to humans, he added.
Also Watch:
Calls for stronger action
Bengaluru-based activist Trishala Ashok said investigations by Indian agencies should go beyond establishing where the animals came from and focus on the trafficking routes, networks and organised crime syndicates servicing the trade.
“Efforts should be taken to repatriate such exotic animals back to their country of origin,” she said.
Indonesia is working with the authorities in India to expedite the repatriation of five baby orangutans who were found in an Odisha forest, suspected to be victims of transnational wildlife trafficking, according to a local media report.