Two ring-tailed lemurs stolen from a safari park in Bangladesh have reportedly been found at a zoo run by India’s richest family.
The lemurs were part of a trio stolen from the Gazipur Safari Park in March 2025 and smuggled abroad, Bangladesh’s Criminal Investigation Department said.
Lemurs, native to Madagascar in Africa, are critically endangered.
The stolen lemurs were brought into Bangladesh through the Dhaka airport in 2018 under a false declaration to customs, investigators said. They were rescued and moved to the safari park.
Dhaka has now sought assistance from Interpol to repatriate the animals, the process of which has been complicated by a lack of microchips, unique identification numbers, or stored DNA profiles to verify their identities, Bangladeshi daily Ajker Potrika reported.
Authorities are seeking to DNA-profile the juvenile lemur still in Bangladesh to determine its blood relation with the two trafficked animals.
The lemurs were smuggled out to India through the Darshana border in Chuadanga and sold for nearly Rs4.8m or £504,00, according to the paper.
The animals were stolen with the help of a security guard and taken to India with the help of a border lineman, investigators said, citing confession statements. They passed through several people before reaching the western city of Jamnagar, where they were allegedly sold to an institution associated with the Vantara wildlife centre.
Investigators said six of the eight suspected in the smuggling case had made confessions before a local court.
Bangladeshi authorities said they were alerted after pictures of the lemurs at Vantara appeared on social media, prompting them to make efforts to recover the animals.
The Independent contacted Vantara for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
Vantara is a 3,500-acre zoo in Gujarat run by the Radhe Krishna Temple Elephant Welfare Trust, which is backed by Reliance, a business conglomerate owned by Mukesh Ambani, one of Asia’s richest people.
It was conceived by the billionaire industrialist’s son Anant Ambani.
The Ambani family has long enjoyed a close relationship with prime minister Narendra Modi, who inaugurated the zoo in March 2025.
Animal rights groups have expressed doubts about Vantara’s value as a genuine conservation initiative, pointing to a lack of transparency over its acquisitions as well as its emphasis on rare species and grand infrastructure. They have also questioned its impact on public zoos due to the transfer of animals to the private zoo from states like Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh.
Vantara has also faced allegations of improper import of animals, triggering scrutiny from authorities in Germany and the EU.
Vantara has rejected the allegations as “entirely false and baseless”.
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