Baby kangaroo found dead in man's luggage at Bengaluru airport, 230 reptiles rescued

An AirAsia passenger was arrested at Bengaluru airport after customs officials discovered over 230 live reptiles and a dead baby kangaroo inside his suitcase. The baby kangaroo, called a joey, was only a few months old and died of suffocation inside the man’s luggage.

According to a Times of India report, the joey’s death came to light when the 22-year-old man was questioned and his luggage examined on Monday night at Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport. He had arrived in Bengaluru from Bangkok on an AirAsia flight at 10.35 pm on Monday night.

The man, a native of Ramnad in Tamil Nadu, was behaving suspiciously, which led customs officials to intercept him. When he was made to open his suitcase, officials were shocked to discover plastic boxes filled with venomous reptiles inside. The boxes contained four monocled cobras or spitting cobras, pythons, iguanas, lizards, tortoises and even small crocodiles.

Even more shocking was the discovery of the joey. “One of the containers had something that looked like a small dog,” an investigating officer quoted by Times of India said. “We opened it and were stunned to find that it was a young kangaroo, which was concealed inside and smuggled. Sadly, it died owning to suffocation inside the suitcase.”