Five orangutan infants found in India — Asharq Al-Awsat
In the Ranakatha reserve forest in Balasore district, Odisha state, eastern India, rangers found five abandoned orangutan infants aged about one and a half years. The animals were placed in the care of a zoo, while Indonesia requested their return. As Asharq Al-Awsat reports, police have launched a criminal investigation into how the primates arrived in Odisha.
Rare primates outside their natural range
Orangutans, which are critically endangered, occur naturally only on Indonesia’s island of Sumatra and on Borneo, which is shared by Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. How the infants were brought to Odisha has not yet been established. The distance to the state is more than 2,000 kilometers by sea and about 7,000 kilometers by land.
Sumant Bindumadhav, a representative of Humane World for Animals India, said the case indicates the significant scale of the exotic animal trade. A June 2026 report by the organization states that the number of exotic animal seizures is increasing, which the authors believe reflects intensified illegal trade. According to the report’s estimate, India’s exotic pet market was worth $42.6 million in 2024.
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Demand and smuggling routes
The report also states that orangutans and gibbons are increasingly being illegally transported to India from the forests of Southeast Asia. A senior official at India’s Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, speaking anonymously, said that thousands of social media influencers promote keeping exotic species as pets, creating demand among wealthy people.
According to government data, by February 2021 more than 40,000 people had voluntarily registered exotic animals. Experts believe this figure does not cover all animals kept privately. WWF-India recorded 56 seizures involving about 4,000 exotic animals in 2022.
Experts name the land border between Myanmar and northeastern India as one of the key smuggling routes. Jimmy Bora, a representative of the conservation organization Aaranyak, noted that seizure data reflect only part of the illegal trade.
