A one-month-old leopard cub was found in a passenger’s carryon luggage at Chennai Airport after withstanding a flight from Thailand to India over the weekend.
The security officials who recovered the cub noticed a man walking in a “suspicious manner” in the arrival area, Rajan Chaudhary, Chennai Airport’s commissioner of customs told the Times of India.
“After he collected his luggage, he was walking in a rather hurried manner. A faint sound was coming from his checked-in luggage,” Chaudhary said.
When officials opened the man’s bag, they discovered a pink plastic basket with a female cub weighing only 1.1 kilograms inside.
“The animal was in a state of shock and was making trill sounds and appeared to be weak.”
Chaudhary said the department received a tip-off that prohibited wild animals would likely be smuggled in on a flight from Thailand.
Customs officials immediately bottle fed the cub some milk and contacted the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) who identified the cub as a leopard of the Panthera Pardus species.
passenger from Bangkok intercepted with one leopard cub at airport by AIU officers. She is a month old female , seized and handed over to Forest Dept.The cub will be rehabilitated in Aringar Zoo Chennai.@PIB_India @cbic_india @CITES pic.twitter.com/0ru1PAzA2F
— Chennai Customs (@ChennaiCustoms) February 2, 2019
Officials from the WCCB handed over the cub to the Tamil Nadu Forest Department to be rehabilitated in the Aringar Anna Zoological Park.
The 45-year-old passenger in possession of the cub was detained and investigations are in progress to determine if the man was part of an international smuggling ring.
According to the ABC, authorities in Thailand have been working to crack down on wildlife crime, which is becoming a significant issue, estimated to be worth between $9 billion and $29 billion a year worldwide.
