Five infant orangutans, a species found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and on Borneo, were found in a forest by rangers patrolling in the Balasore district of India's eastern Odisha state last week. Indonesia's Forestry Ministry has asked India to establish the origin of the abandoned orangutans, known for their shaggy red fur, and return them if they are found to have come from their usual habitat abroad. The rescue of the rare apes has raised fresh questions about how exotic animals enter India and how the country is used in the illegal wildlife trade.
"The discovery on the eastern coast of India is a bit mind-boggling. It's like that time a few years ago when live kangaroos were found wandering along the highways of West Bengal," Kanitha Krishnasamy, Southeast Asia director at wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC, told DW. "What are orangutans doing in India?
Were they smuggled from their native Malaysia or Indonesia or did they come from a facility?" she asked. The Odisha government has asked the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau to investigate how the critically endangered animals reached the state. "These animals are not found in India and are mostly seen in the rainforests of Malaysia, Indonesia, Borneo and Sumatra in Southeast Asia," said Odisha's Forest and Environment Minister Ganesh Ram Singh Khuntia.
"We suspect that they might have been released in the Balasore district forest… by an international wildlife smuggling racket." The orangutans are the latest in a series of exotic wildlife being seized in India. In November 2024, authorities in the Indian city of Bengaluru seized 40 rare animals arriving from the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, including Aldabra giant tortoises, gibbons, American alligators and iguanas. In June 2025, Mumbai Customs seized 284 exotic animals arriving in four consignments from the Thai capital, Bangkok, including snakes and tortoises.
In July 2025, customs officials in the Indian city of Pune intercepted 20 exotic animals from passengers arriving from Bangkok. They included 14 green tree pythons, four double-eyed fig parrots and two Sumatran striped rabbits. According to figures from TRAFFIC, 7,272 individual animals, alive and dead, were seized from passenger baggage in smuggling attempts between Thailand and India between January 2022 and May 2025, with more than 80% of interceptions taking place in India.
The animals included reptiles, birds and mammals — many apparently destined for the exotic pet trade. "We have found hundreds of species and thousands of individuals being trafficked into India through air and land routes. This changed drastically from around 2020," conservation researcher and practitioner Uttara Mendiratta told DW.
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