African lion cub, 3 exotic langurs rescued from Kolkata suburb

KOLKATA: A lion cub and three langurs were rescued from the northern suburbs of Kolkata early on Saturday. Three persons have been arrested in this connection.
The animals were found in nylon bags, stitched at the mouth, inside an SUV by officials of the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau and West Bengal forest department. They were “most probably” being smuggled from Bangladesh to a private zoo in western India, officials said.

Two of them are critically endangered white-headed langurs, native to Vietnamese forests; the third one is either a juvenile white-headed langur or a Javan lutung, an old-world monkey endemic to Javan Islands, the officials said, adding that the lion cub was “presumably from Africa”.
All the animals have been handed over to Alipore Zoo. There have been recent instances of endangered species being rescued from Kolkata and its neighbouring areas but this is the first time that a lion cub has been recovered, say wildlife experts.