Red panda found in luggage of smuggling suspects at Thailand airport

Thai customs officials have arrested six Indian nationals for attempting to smuggle dozens of wild animals, including a red panda and cotton-top tamarin monkey, out of the country.

Officers found 87 animals, including monitor lizards, birds and snakes, packaged inside the suspects’ checked luggage at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport. They were trying to fly to Mumbai.

Thailand is one of the world’s major hubs for illegal wildlife smuggling, a multibillion-dollar transnational trade, due to its rich biodiversity, location and infrastructure. Smugglers use Thailand to transit animals to be sold in China and Vietnam, and recent years have seen an increase in trafficking to India.

“We have found out that the animals include 29 black throat monitor lizards, 21 snakes, 15 birds, including parrots – a total of 87 animals. The animals were hidden inside the luggage,” the customs department said in a statement on Wednesday.

Photos released by the department showed a red panda – an endangered species that is about the size of a domestic cat, with a bear-like body – peeking out of a wicker basket.

A cotton-top tamarin monkey, which is a critically endangered species, according to the ICUN red list, had been placed in a plastic box. A Sulawesi bear cuscus, which is classified as vulnerable, was inside a basket that had been taped shut. Snakes and lizards were packed away in cloth bags and plastic food tubs.

Related: More than 400,000 songbirds killed by organised crime in Cyprus

If found guilty, the suspects could face a maximum of 10 years in jail or a fine of four times the amount of import duties.

In February, a Mongolian man was arrested at the same airport on suspicion of trying to smuggle Komodo dragons, pythons and more than 20 live fish out of Thailand.

Kanitha Krishnasamy, the south-east Asia director for Traffic, an NGO focused on the illegal wildlife trade, said there had been a “very active and persistent level of trafficking of live animals between south-east Asia and south Asia”, especially since the resumption of air travel after the lifting of Covid lockdowns.

She said: “The incredible number and diversity of species being smuggled between south-east Asia and south Asia is mind-boggling. In the most recent case you have wild species from South America all the way to the Himalayas and Indonesia.

“Airlines and the transport sector play a crucial role, as frontliners who come across these bags being loaded on to a plane or sent as cargo. They have the ability not only to detect but collaborate with enforcement agencies to identify the parties involved in the trafficking chain.”

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report