Villagers who first spotted five baby orangutans in a casuarina forest in India in early September were puzzled by their reddish fur and unfamiliar faces.
The three males and two females, aged 6 to 8 months, had been abandoned on a plantation in Odisha, eastern India, more than 2,700 kilometres (1,700 miles) from their native rainforests in Borneo and Sumatra. Their discovery points to a growing illicit trade in apes trafficked into India.
The orangutans are now at an Indian zoo, where keepers have reportedly been playing classical music to soothe them.
Wild orangutans are native only to the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, where they help sustain rainforests by dispersing seeds over vast areas, allowing trees to regenerate and absorb carbon that would otherwise contribute to global warming. The species is critically endangered, with severe habitat loss among its major threats. Around 119,500 orangutans remain in the wild, according to the conservation organisation World Wildlife Fund.
The global illegal wildlife trade is estimated to be worth $34 billion annually, according to a 2026 study by researchers at the National University of Singapore. India is emerging as an important market, with experts saying reported seizures represent only a fraction of a growing trade in exotic and non-native animals sold to wealthy Indian collectors.
India’s wildlife laws were primarily designed to protect native species, including elephants, rhinoceroses and tigers, from being trafficked overseas. Gaps in regulations governing imported animals have made it difficult for authorities to trace the origins of exotic wildlife.
In 2022, two juvenile Sumatran orangutans were found in boxes at a checkpoint between the northeastern states of Assam and Mizoram. Another was rescued in Mizoram in 2023, while a young orangutan was found in an apartment near Mumbai in November 2024. At least 23 gibbons were seized at Indian airports in 2025, according to an analysis by the nonprofit Wildlife Trust of India. In May 2026, Egyptian authorities seized three sedated baby chimpanzees being transported to India.
“India has become the number one destination for the live trade of primates,” said Sinan Serhadli, a wildlife trafficking expert at the Orangutan Information Centre in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province.
Wealthy collectors seeking rare animals as “status symbols” are driving the trade in trafficked wildlife from Southeast Asia, a regional hub for the trade in species originating elsewhere, said Uttara Mendiratta, a wildlife trafficking researcher in India.
The expansion of tourism has brought more direct flights to India through cities such as Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, providing traffickers with routes that are faster, though riskier, than overland border crossings.
“The profit margins are so high that they can afford to lose a few (animals) and still make a profit,” Mendiratta said.
Questions have also been raised about the legal trade. Although most commercial trade in orangutans is banned, exceptions exist for animals bred in captivity. India imported 41 orangutans between 2021 and 2024, according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the global treaty regulating trade in endangered wildlife.
Serhadli questioned whether the animals had been legitimately bred in captivity.
“It just shows the loopholes. And ... corruption as well,” he said.
The CITES Secretariat declined to comment, saying the matter was under review.
Concerned about the spread of diseases from animals to humans during the COVID-19 pandemic, India introduced a system in 2020 allowing people to register exotic animals without proving their origins.
Owners can report births, deaths and breeding involving non-native species through an online portal. However, the government lacks sufficient staff and expertise to adequately inspect animal collections and identify species from around the world. The system also allows trafficked animals to be misrepresented as registered animals, Mendiratta said.
India tightened its wildlife laws in 2022, giving authorities clearer powers to seize illegally traded exotic animals and prosecute traffickers. By then, however, the country had already “opened the floodgates”, she said.
India’s exotic pet trade “sits at the crossroads of biodiversity loss, unbridled community demand, and organized criminal activity”, according to a 2026 report by Humane World for Animals India.
India’s forest ministry did not respond to the Associated Press’s request for comment.
Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry said it was taking “active steps” to bring the five baby orangutans found in Odisha back to the country. It has sent experts to verify their origins and assess their health.
The infants’ mothers were likely killed, leaving the young orangutans traumatised. In the wild, orangutans typically depend on their mothers for up to nine years.
Conservationists have successfully repatriated orangutans from Thailand to Indonesia, but only one orangutan has so far been returned from India.
Last year, an orangutan was transferred to Vantara, a private wildlife facility run by the family of billionaire Mukesh Ambani. A federal wildlife official in New Delhi wrote in a report that India’s federal wildlife officials and CITES authority had not been informed of the transfer.
Officials had ordered the orangutan’s transfer from a local public zoo over concerns about its care. Vantara describes itself as a wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centre. The orangutan received treatment for a respiratory infection and pneumonia before being returned to Indonesia on October 19, following 19 months at the private facility.
India’s CITES authority did not respond to the AP’s request for comment.
Vantara, a 3,500-acre wildlife facility in western India, houses more than 150,000 animals representing over 2,000 species.
The facility has faced international scrutiny over its animal acquisitions. In November 2025, CITES questioned shipments to Vantara that included snow leopards from Germany, a bonobo said to have been bred in Iraq and a gorilla reportedly from Haiti. None of these primates is native to the country from which it was reportedly sourced.
India’s Supreme Court cleared Vantara of allegations of wildlife trafficking and animal mistreatment in 2025.
In September, 27 wildlife conservation and animal welfare organisations issued a letter urging the facility to stop importing wild animals, citing concerns about endangered species and animal welfare.
The groups said they had “never encountered anything comparable to the scale and diversity” of Vantara’s imports, pointing to more than 60,000 animals acquired over a short period.
One controversial acquisition listed in Vantara’s 2024-25 inventory is a Tapanuli orangutan, considered the world’s rarest great ape. Recognised as a distinct species only in 2017, it is found exclusively in a small area of Indonesia’s Sumatra island, where just 716 remain in the wild.
“The Tapanuli orangutan is hovering just above extinction,” Serhadli said. His organisation is one of the few working with the species. The individual at Vantara would be the only Tapanuli orangutan in captivity.
CITES trade data show that the animal left Indonesia in 2024 and arrived in India via the United Arab Emirates.
“That can’t happen legally,” Serhadli said.
Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry said it was taking reports that a Tapanuli orangutan might be outside the country “seriously”. However, it said it could not confirm the animal’s species, origin or how it had reached India.
The ministry said an investigation would require checks of permits and transfer records, along with scientific testing.