Endangered gibbon video sparks wildlife trafficking probe in India

A thirty-second video posted to Instagram on a Monday morning has unraveled a chain of animal transfers stretching across two thousand kilometers, raising hard questions about how endangered primates move through India's wildlife bureaucracy.

The video showed Vikram, one of Tamil cinema's biggest names, cradling and playing with a lar gibbon—a small, blonde-furred ape native to Southeast Asia. His real name is Kennedy John Victor. He has spent more than three decades in film, building a reputation for unconventional and physically demanding roles. The clip spread quickly online before he deleted it within hours. But by then, wildlife officials in Tamil Nadu had already begun asking where the animal came from and whether anyone had broken the law to bring it there.

Lar gibbons are protected under CITES, an international agreement that severely restricts their trade. India has written these protections into its own wildlife laws. To legally keep one, a person must register it with authorities and follow strict rules about possession and transfer. To import one at all requires permits from the Directorate General of Foreign Trade, a no-objection certificate, and approval from a wildlife conservator. The species itself is endangered—habitat loss, hunting, and the illegal pet trade have decimated populations across Thailand, Myanmar, and Malaysia, where they live in small family groups in tropical forests.

What investigators found when they began tracing the gibbon's path was a series of transfers with documentation gaps. A man in Manipur, a state in India's northeast that borders Myanmar, had declared eight lar gibbons—four males and four females—on PARIVESH, the government's official platform for registering exotic animals, in 2020. Malaysia was listed as their country of origin. On June 5 of this year, three of those gibbons were transferred from Manipur to someone in Perundurai, in Tamil Nadu's Erode district, with adoption listed as the purpose. But investigators found no evidence that permission from Tamil Nadu's Chief Wildlife Warden had been obtained for the animals to enter the state. Two months later, on August 5, one male and one female gibbon moved again—this time from Perundurai to the home of a relative of Vikram's in Chennai, the state capital.

Rakesh Kumar Dogra, Tamil Nadu's Chief Wildlife Warden, told the BBC that individuals could legally keep a lar gibbon if they had the proper permits and documentation. "An investigation is under way into where the lar gibbon came from," he said. "Only then can we say whether it was brought illegally." Officials have not concluded that the animal was trafficked, that Vikram owned it, or that he was involved in bringing it into India. Vikram has not commented publicly. His public relations officer said the actor would issue a statement if he chose to.

The case has drawn attention from India's Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, a federal agency that investigates organized wildlife crime. Thenmozhi, the bureau's Southern Zone Deputy Director, said it had contacted wildlife officials in Chennai asking them to verify documents and take appropriate action. "The lar gibbon is classified as a protected species under this agreement," she said of CITES. "They should only be handled as protected animals." The bureau said further steps would depend on what the investigation uncovered.

The controversy arrives amid a broader pattern of exotic animal smuggling into India. In recent years, customs officials have repeatedly stopped passengers arriving from Southeast Asia with live reptiles, birds, and primates hidden in luggage. In July 2025, more than 350 exotic animals from Bangkok were seized at Mumbai and Pune airports over two months. In November, customs officials in Bengaluru found a gibbon among animals being brought in by passengers from Bangkok. Chennai itself has been a point of entry: in February this year, officials seized 31 exotic animals from a single passenger arriving from Bangkok, including tortoises, iguanas, and snakes. India's northeast, with its porous borders and proximity to Myanmar, has been flagged as a trafficking route, though authorities have not yet determined whether these particular gibbons followed that path. What remains clear is that somewhere in the chain of transfers—from Malaysia to Manipur to Erode to Chennai—the paperwork did not keep pace with the animal.