Bengaluru: Around 72 spotted-black terrapins were seized smuggling at the Kempe Gowda International Airport on Monday morning.
The turtles were found in two suitcases of passengers from Chennai, who were travelling to Thailand in a Malaysian Airlines flight.
The smugglers have been identified as Imran Khan and Haroon Rashid who live in Chennai itself. It is learnt that the scanning personnel at the airport found something moving inside their bag and the security officers ordered them to open the bags.
The accused were arrested and handed over to the Devanahalli police station.
Both the accused were produced before a Devanahalli court on Monday evening and were remanded to judicial custody. The security personnel said that during the interrogation, the accused duo confessed that the turtles were brought from Kolkata and were being taken to Thailand.
The turtles were suspected to be caught in the Ganga River.
Incidentally, this is a second case of terrapins being smuggled through airports in the last one month.
Around 130 pond turtles were seized by the Customs Department at the Dhaka Airport in Bangladesh. Those turtles were also being smuggled to Malaysia through a Malaysian Airlines flight. Theses turtles are mostly used as pets and some even use them as food, wildlife experts said.
