DHAKA / JAMNAGAR : Bangladesh’s Criminal Investigation Department has confirmed that two of three ring-tailed lemurs stolen from a safari park near Dhaka in March 2025 were trafficked into India. Whether those animals are the same pair now housed at Vantara, the wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centre in Jamnagar, Gujarat, has not been scientifically established.
The distinction matters. Several Bangladeshi and international outlets reported this week that investigators had “traced” the primates to Vantara after photographs circulated on social media and after arrested suspects described a sale in India. On 11 September, however, CID Special Superintendent of Police (Media) Chufi Ullah said the agency had not confirmed that the animals at the Gujarat facility were the stolen ones. “There was no way to establish that the two lemurs stolen from Gazipur Safari Park were the same animals currently at Vantara without scientific verification or the arrest and interrogation of the entire trafficking network,” he told The Business Standard. The CID has established that two lemurs crossed into India; it has not, he said, determined where they went afterwards.
Ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) are native only to Madagascar. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the species as Endangered; it has been on CITES Appendix I since 1977, which tightly restricts international commercial trade. The animals at the centre of the Bangladesh case were not wild-caught in Madagascar in 2025. Investigators say two lemurs were seized at Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in 2018 while being brought into the country under a false customs declaration, then transferred to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Safari Park in Gazipur. They later produced offspring. On the night of 23 March 2025, three animals were taken from the park.
According to the CID’s reconstruction, an outsourced security worker and others removed the animals, held them briefly, and sold them into a trafficking chain. One lemur was later recovered in Bangladesh, returned to the park, and subsequently died; a sample from that animal has been sent for laboratory analysis. Two others were, investigators say, moved across the Darshana crossing in Chuadanga. Eight people have been named in the case; most have given confessional statements in court. Two names that surfaced in interrogation have not been independently identified with passports or other documents, the CID said.
Bangladeshi authorities have asked Interpol for assistance in any repatriation. That process is stalled by a basic forensic gap: the stolen lemurs were not microchipped and the park had not stored DNA profiles. Visual comparison of social-media images with park records is not a legal substitute for genetic matching. Officials have said they are working on a DNA profile from remaining or preserved material in Gazipur. Vantara has said it is willing to submit its animals to the same test.
In a statement issued after the reports appeared, Vantara said it is not an accused party, has received no official notice or request from any investigating agency, and has no association with any of the individuals named in the Bangladesh case. It said every animal at the centre is held in accordance with Indian law and under the supervision of the competent authorities, that it maintains provenance records, and that it has already submitted documentation on its two ring-tailed lemurs and asked for independent verification. The centre said it welcomes DNA testing by competent authorities in both countries and will cooperate with any lawful request.
Vantara, inaugurated in March 2025 and associated with the Reliance Foundation, occupies about 3,500 acres in Jamnagar district and describes itself as a rescue, care and conservation facility. Its animal-acquisition practices were the subject of earlier litigation in India. In August 2025 the Supreme Court constituted a Special Investigation Team headed by retired Justice Jasti Chelameswar. After an inquiry that included site inspection and coordination with statutory agencies, the SIT reported no contravention of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, CITES procedures, or related statutes in the matters then before it. In mid-September 2025 the Supreme Court accepted those findings, closed the complaints under examination, and directed that no further proceedings be entertained on the same set of past allegations. That ruling does not, by itself, resolve a new cross-border claim that has not yet been tested with forensic evidence.
The episode sits at the junction of two familiar problems in wildlife enforcement. One is the porosity of land borders and the speed with which high-value primates move through informal networks once they leave a poorly inventoried collection. The other is the difficulty of proving identity when institutions do not share a common, court-ready system of chips, studbooks and DNA banks. CITES Appendix I animals can be transferred legally between registered facilities when permits and non-commercial purpose are in order; they can also be moved through grey routes if paperwork is incomplete or identity is assumed rather than proven.
Until laboratory comparison is completed—and until Indian and Bangladeshi authorities formally exchange samples and results—the claim that the stolen park animals and the Vantara pair are the same individuals remains an allegation, not a finding. Both sides say they accept DNA testing. That is the step that would turn resemblance and suspect statements into evidence.