Animal

Baby orangutan ‘drugged and stuffed in suitcase by tourist who wanted him as a pet’


A Russian tourist has been arrested on suspicion of drugging a baby orangutan to smuggle him home as a pet.

Andrei Zhestkov, 27, was flying home from Bali when he was detained while passing through security.

When officers stopped him, they opened his suitcase to find a two-year-old male orangutan sleeping inside a rattan basket.

A baby orangutan was found drugged and stuffed into a suitcase (Picture: AFP/Getty)
Authorities said they found allergy pills in the basket (Picture: EPA)

Bali conservation agency official Ketut Catur Marbawa said: ‘We believe the orangutan was fed allergy pills which caused him to sleep. We found the pills inside the suitcase.’

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A bottle of baby formula and a number of blankets were also found stuffed in his bag alongside two live geckos and five lizards.

Zhestkov told authorities that he was given the primate by another Russian tourist who bought the primate for $3,000 (£2,270) from a street market in Java.

He claimed his friend convinced him he could bring home the orangutan as a pet.

Andrei Zhestkov, 27, has been arrested after being caught with the primate in his suitcase (Picture: EPA)
Luckily the orangutan is now doing just fine (Picture: Reuters)

Zhestkov could face up to five years in prison and $7,000 (£5,299) in fines for smuggling, Marbawa said.

Orangutans are a critically endangered species, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with only about 100,000 remaining worldwide.

Plantation workers and villagers in Indonesia often consider the apes pests and sometimes attack them, while poachers capture the animals to sell as pets.





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