On an ordinary Tuesday, the village of Badapai became the setting for a mystery.
Five orangutan babies appeared alone in a forest near the Balasore district of Odisha, India, on September 8, 2026. The detail that baffled everyone: this species is not found anywhere in mainland Asia. Its home is thousands of kilometers away, in the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra. Thousands of curious onlookers arrived at the site as soon as the news became known.
Forest director Pratik Prakash Indalkar immediately ruled out natural migration — there is no wild corridor connecting those jungles with India. Four of the babies were healthy; one was receiving intravenous fluids. Authorities suspect an international wildlife trafficking network, since each animal could be worth up to 25 lakh rupees on the black market. They are now being cared for by veterinarians at Nandankanan Zoo while the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau tries to reconstruct how they got there.
