India emerges as major wildlife trafficking hub as exotic animals flood in

Five infant orangutans, their reddish fur matted and their origins unknown, were discovered in a forest in Odisha state in eastern India last week. The animals belong to a species found nowhere in the wild except on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo. Their appearance in an Indian forest raised an immediate and troubling question: how did critically endangered apes native to Southeast Asia end up abandoned in the woods of India?

Indonesia's Forestry Ministry has demanded answers and asked India to trace where the orangutans came from and return them if they originated in Indonesian territory. The Odisha government has launched an investigation through its Wildlife Crime Control Bureau. Officials suspect the animals were released deliberately by an international smuggling operation, though the full story remains unclear. Kanitha Krishnasamy, Southeast Asia director at TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring network, described the discovery as bewildering. She pointed to a similar incident years earlier when live kangaroos were found wandering highways in West Bengal—another impossible presence that suggested organized trafficking. The orangutans are not an isolated incident but rather the most visible symptom of a much larger problem.

Over the past few years, India has become a major destination for trafficked exotic animals. In November 2024, customs officials in Bengaluru seized 40 rare animals arriving from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, including Aldabra giant tortoises, gibbons, American alligators, and iguanas. In June 2025, Mumbai Customs intercepted 284 exotic animals in four separate shipments from Bangkok, Thailand, containing snakes and tortoises. A month later, in July 2025, Pune customs officials stopped 20 animals from passengers arriving from Bangkok—fourteen green tree pythons, four double-eyed fig parrots, and two Sumatran striped rabbits. The pattern is unmistakable and accelerating.

According to TRAFFIC data, between January 2022 and May 2025, authorities seized 7,272 individual animals—alive and dead—from passenger baggage in smuggling attempts between Thailand and India alone. More than eighty percent of those interceptions occurred on the Indian side. The animals represent hundreds of species, many critically endangered, destined for the exotic pet trade. Uttara Mendiratta, a conservation researcher, told DW that the volume and diversity of trafficking has shifted dramatically since around 2020. "Both the volume of this trafficking, and the number of species involved, many of which are endangered, have been shocking," she said. The routes are multiple: animals move from Myanmar through India's northeastern border, from Bangladesh into Indian territory, and by air from Thailand and Malaysia through Indian airports.

What makes the situation more difficult to control is that enforcement has not kept pace with the trade itself. Trishala Ashok, a conservation filmmaker, explained the core problem: "Our enforcement systems haven't evolved at the same speed as the trade. We are still reacting to individual seizures rather than mapping the networks, financiers, suppliers and buyers behind them." When customs officers seize a shipment of animals, the investigation often stops there. The questions that would dismantle the operation—who supplied them, who arranged the movement, who paid, who was waiting to receive them—often go unanswered. Tito Joseph of the Wildlife Protection Society of India noted that while exotic animal smuggling has always existed in India, it has increased significantly since 2018. The scale of the networks remains difficult to establish because investigations treat each seizure as an endpoint rather than a beginning.

Demand for exotic pets is being fueled by social media and unregulated digital marketplaces. Ravi Chellam, a wildlife biologist, explained that international platforms have become both a display case and a marketplace for illegal wildlife. "These platforms are also serving as an online marketplace for the illegal trade to flourish," he said. The problem is amplified by wealthy collectors who accumulate animals from around the world and showcase them publicly. Once an animal has crossed multiple borders, establishing its origin becomes nearly impossible. A gibbon seized in India may have originated in Malaysia, but proving that connection requires investigation that rarely happens. TRAFFIC identified India and Malaysia as the countries most implicated in an illegal gibbon trade chain in 2025, with animals being moved from Malaysia into India. The five orangutans in Odisha remain a mystery—a visible failure of the system to prevent the movement of endangered animals across continents, and a sign that India's role in global wildlife trafficking is only growing.