Baby orangutans in India expose 'frightening' scale of trafficking
Five baby orangutans abandoned in a forest in eastern India have exposed the scale of an illegal exotic wildlife trade that experts say is bringing increasingly rare species into the country.
The critically endangered orangutans, which are native only to Indonesia’s Sumatra island and the island of Borneo, shared by Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, were found by forest rangers in Balasore district of Odisha.
The five animals, estimated to be about one-and-a-half years old, are now being cared for at a zoo. Indonesia has requested their repatriation.
“There have been several instances of exotic wild animals being found or seized across the country,” said Sumanth Bindumadhav of Humane World for Animals India. “The scale is massive.”
In a June 2026 report, Bindumadhav’s organisation described a “rising trade in exotic wildlife” in India, pointing to a sharp increase in seizures as evidence of growing illegal trafficking.
The report estimated India’s exotic-pet market at $42.6 million in 2024 and said orangutans and gibbons were increasingly being trafficked into the country from the rainforests of Southeast Asia.
A senior official with India’s Wildlife Crime Control Bureau said thousands of social media influencers were promoting exotic animals as pets online, helping fuel demand among wealthy followers.
“It is a huge market,” the official said, speaking anonymously because they were not authorised to speak to the media. “Rich people keep them in their homes.”
More than 40,000 people had registered exotic animals under a government voluntary disclosure scheme by February 2021, according to government data.
Experts say the figure likely represents only a small portion of the exotic animals kept privately in India.
“This is a figure from only those who registered themselves, so the true volume of it is potentially much larger and remains unknown,” Bindumadhav said.
“The true scale of it is actually quite frightening.”
Shekhar Kumar Niraj, former India head of global wildlife trade monitoring group TRAFFIC, said the increase in trafficking was also linked to a growing number of exotic animals being kept in private collections.
“Private zoos have violated laws at a very alarming scale across the country,” Niraj said.
He said primates were particularly sought after because of their intelligence and ability to interact with humans.
India’s federal authorities did not respond to AFP requests for comment.
WWF-India documented 56 seizures involving about 4,000 exotic animals in 2022 alone.
In October 2025, Mumbai customs officers arrested a passenger carrying two endangered gibbons hidden inside a checked bag.
Other seizures in Mumbai that year included lizards, tree-climbing possums and dozens of venomous vipers.
In 2024, forest officials recovered a trafficked orangutan from an apartment in Maharashtra.
Experts, however, say such seizures represent only a fraction of the illegal trade, with many trafficked animals likely remaining hidden in private collections across the country.