A 28-year-old Russian man has been sentenced to a year in prison for smuggling a drugged Orangutan in Bali’s Ngurah Rai Airport back in March 2019.
Andrei Zhestkov, who was caught by security officers during a security screening before his flight back to Russia, admitted that he had planned to keep the primate as a pet.
Authorities later discovered that the two-year-old Orangutan had been fed allergy pills before it fell asleep in a rattan basket inside the suitcase. Officers also found two live geckos and five lizards inside his bag.
Zhestkov claims that the Orangutan was a gift from his friend, a fellow Russian, who purchased it for US$3,000 from a street market in Java. The judges also ordered Zhestkov to either pay a Rp10million fine or serve a further two months in jail.
Source: Channel News Asia
Image: AFP