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Bid to smuggle leopard cub foiled by officials at Chennai Airport

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DailyBite
DailyBiteFeb 02, 2019 | 17:52

Bid to smuggle leopard cub foiled by officials at Chennai Airport

In a shocking incident, customs officials seized a leopard cub from a passenger at Chennai airport around midnight Friday and early hours of Saturday.

According to a senior customs official who confirmed the news to DailyO, a 45-year-old man — Kaha Moideen — had brought the month-old female cub in his checked-in luggage from Bangkok in Thailand. 

“We had received intelligence reports that of wildlife trafficking and were on alert. This man came to Chennai from Bangkok and was evading security and other officials. He had a trolley-bag and there was a weird shrill noise emitting from the bag. We then confiscated his suitcase and on examining found that there was a live animal cub in a pink plastic picnic basket inside the trolley-bag,” the official said.

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Terrified, shocked, and doomed to spend a life of captivity in the Indian zoo — the leopard cub smuggled from Thailand. (Source: Air Intelligence Unit, Chennai Customs)

The officials then found the cub in a shocked state — trembling, making trilling noises and terrified, and tried to feed it milk through a feeding bottle.

The customs officials then alerted the Tamil Nadu forest department, and the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB). Veterinarians and officials from the Aringar Anna Zoological Park examined the cub and confirmed it to be a month-old female leopard cub — weighing 1.1 kg and measuring 54 cm nose to tail, in good condition but extremely weak and in a state of shock. The cub and the man have been handed over to Tamil Nadu forest department for further action. If proven guilty, the man will be charged against the Wildlife Protection Act 1972.

However, the miseries of the cub are from over.

As mandated by the Forest Department, the cub will be transferred to the Aringar Anna Zoological Park where it is likely to spend the remainder of its life. No efforts were or will be made to reunite the cub with the mother because there is no such requirement/mandate/provisions under the law. 

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It is a cruel law in the country that despite being poached and torn away from the mother by humans, it is the animal cub that languishes the remaining life behind bars.

The poachers? Of course, they’ll go scot-free after paying a paltry sum of the money from poaching as fine.

Last updated: February 02, 2019 | 18:12
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