Chennai: Air customs seized 9,000 baby tortoises from a passenger who arrived from Kuala Lumpur by a Malaysian Airlines flight on Tuesday. The consignment was handed over to the forest officials, while R Narayanan from Kolathur, who tried to smuggle in the reptiles claiming that they were packaged food, was fined.
Around 1,500 tortoises died because they had been kept in three bags for more than 10 hours. Narayanan had bought the tortoises, each three inches in size, from China. Forest officials told customs that the tortoises were an exotic species and would not survive for more than 15 hours inside bags.
Customs sleuths intercepted Narayanan when he tried to walk through green channel with three bags. He insisted that he had nothing to declare.
27/03/13 Times of India
