Indian customs officers in Mumbai said they have stopped a plane passenger arriving from Thailand with a wriggling cargo of live snakes, the third such seizure this month.
“Customs officers… foiled yet another wildlife smuggling attempt, 16 live snakes… seized from passenger returning from Thailand,” said customs officers in the airport in the Indian financial hub.
The passenger, who arrived on Sunday, has been arrested, the customs agency said in a statement, with “further investigation underway”.
The live snakes included reptiles often sold in the pet trade, and were largely non-venomous, or with venom too weak to affect people.
They included garter snakes, a rhino rat snake and a Kenyan sand boa, among others.
In early June, customs officers stopped a passenger smuggling dozens of venomous vipers, also arriving from Thailand.
Days later, officers stopped another traveller carrying 100 creatures including lizards, sunbirds and tree-climbing possums.
Wildlife trade monitor TRAFFIC, which battles the smuggling of wild animals and plants, has warned of a “very troubling” trend in trafficking driven by the exotic pet trade.
More than 7,000 animals, dead and alive, have been seized along the Thailand-India air route in the last 3.5 years, it said.
The snakes are a relatively unusual seizure in Mumbai, with customs officers more regularly posting pictures of hauls of smuggled gold, cash, cannabis or pills of suspected cocaine swallowed by passengers.
However, in February, customs officials at Mumbai airport also stopped a smuggler with five Siamang gibbons, a small ape native to the forests of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.
Those small creatures, listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, were “ingeniously concealed” in a plastic crate placed inside the passenger’s trolley bag, customs officers said.
In November, customs officers seized a passenger carrying a wriggling live cargo of 12 turtles, and a month before, four hornbill birds, all on planes arriving from Thailand.
In September, two passengers were arrested with five juvenile caimans, a reptile in the alligator family.
