Indian customs officers in Mumbai said they have stopped an airplane passenger who arrived from Thailand with a twisted load of snakes live, the third seizure this month.
“Customs officers … They thwarted another attempt at wild life, 16 live snakes … seized from passengers who returned from Thailand,” said customs officers at the airport of the Indian Financial Center.
The passenger, who arrived on Sunday, was arrested, said the customs agency in a statement, with “more ongoing investigation.”
Live snakes included reptiles often sold in pet commerce, and were largely poisonous, or with too weak poison to affect people.
They included league snakes, a rhinos rat and a bean boom in Kenya, among others.
At the beginning of June, Customs officers arrested a smuggling passenger dozens of poisonous vipers, also arrived from Thailand.
Days later, the officers arrested another traveler who transported 100 creatures, including lizards, CBirds and tsiraignas to cut the trees.
The wildlife trade monitors traffic, which fights against smuggling of wild animals and plants, warned about a “very worrying” trend in traffic driven by the exotic pet trade.
More than 7,000 animals, dead and alive, have been seized along the Thailand-Indian air route in the last 3.5 years, he said.
Snakes are a relatively unusual convulsion in Mumbai, with customs officers that most regularly publish images of smuggling gold, effective, cannabis or pills of alleged cocaine swallowed by passengers.
However, in February, Customs officials at Mumbai airport also arrested a smuggler with five Siamang Gibbons, a small native ape of Indonesia, Malaysian and Thailand forests.
These little creatures, listed as in danger by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, were “ingeniously hidden” in a plastic box placed inside the passenger's car bag, customs officers said.
In November, Customs officers confiscated a passenger who carried a twisted live load of 12 turtles, and a month earlier, four birds of Cálaos, all in planes that arrive from Thailand.
In September, two passengers were arrested with five youth caimans, a reptile in the Aligator family.
