Two Indian Women Busted At Thailand Airport Trying To Smuggle 109 Live Animals, Including Porcupine, Hidden In Luggage

Two Indian women were busted at an airport in Thailand for attempting to smuggle 109 live animals, including snakes, armadillos, porcupines, and turtles, in their baggage, authorities said.

On Monday, June 27, security officials at the Suvarnabhumi Airport in the Bang Phli District, detained two women after finding suspicious items inside their two suitcases, Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation said.

Fifty lizards, thirty-five turtles, twenty snakes, two white porcupines, and two armadillos were seized from the luggage that belonged to 38-year-old Nithya Raja and 24-year-old Zakia Sulthana Ebrahim, Thai authorities told Bangkok Post.

The women were reportedly traveling to the Indian city of Chennai.

Both women were charged with violating the country’s Wildlife Conservation and Protection Act of 2019, the Animal Disease Act of 2015, and the Customs Act of 2017.

It is unclear what the suspects were planning to do with the wild animals after smuggling them to India or what happened to the animals after they were rescued by the airport officials.

In 2019, officials at the Chennai airport found a month-old leopard in the luggage of a man, who flew into the country from Bangkok.

The cub along with the passenger was handed over to the Tami Nadu Forest Department for further action.

A similar incident was reported when a 30-year-old man was caught while trying to slither past U.S. border agents in California with 52 lizards and snakes hidden in his clothing.

The man’s truck was pulled out for additional inspection when he arrived at the San Ysidro border crossing with Mexico on Feb. 25, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement.

Nine snakes and 43 horned lizards were found tied up in small bags "concealed in the man’s jacket, pants pockets, and groin area," the statement said.

"Smugglers will try every possible way to try and get their product, or in this case live reptiles, across the border," Sidney Aki, Customs and Border Protection director of field operations in San Diego, had said following the man’s arrest.