Vanity, Apes, and Paperwork: The Bizarre Trail of a Celebrity's Gibbon

Tamil cinema icon Vikram, known off-screen as Kennedy John Victor, recently discovered the perils of digital oversharing. An Instagram video featuring the actor cuddling a lar gibbon—an endangered primate native to Southeast Asia—was hastily deleted within hours of posting. But the internet is forever, and Indian wildlife authorities are decidedly less forgiving than film critics. Now, a sprawling investigation is tracing the animal's journey across the subcontinent, exposing the murky intersection of celebrity status symbols and international wildlife regulations.

The primate in question did not simply wander into a Chennai residence. The trail extends over 2,000 kilometres to the north-eastern state of Manipur, a region bordering Myanmar that frequently doubles as a porous transit lounge for exotic wildlife. According to forestry officials, this particular gibbon is part of a cohort of eight declared on the government's PARIVESH portal back in 2020 by a Manipur resident, with Malaysia listed as their original home. Bureaucracy, it seems, can occasionally track what border guards miss.

In early June, three of these apes were shipped to Perundurai in Tamil Nadu under the guise of adoption. By August, two had found their way to the Chennai home of Vikram’s relative.

Owning an endangered species in India is not strictly illegal, provided one possesses a towering stack of paperwork. The state's Chief Wildlife Warden, Rakesh Kumar Dogra, noted that legal possession requires clearance from the Directorate General of Foreign Trade, alongside various no-objection and conservator certificates. An investigation is under way into where the lar gibbon came from; only then can we say whether it was brought illegally, he stated. Thus far, investigators have found a glaring absence of permission from Tamil Nadu authorities for the animals' interstate relocation.

This incident is hardly an isolated lapse in judgment; it is a symptom of a booming exotic pet economy. India's newly affluent classes have developed an appetite for living curiosities, turning flights from Bangkok to Mumbai, Pune, and Chennai into veritable arks of smuggled fauna. Customs officials routinely intercept luggage stuffed with iguanas, tortoises, and indeed, gibbons.

The Wildlife Crime Control Bureau has now intervened in the Chennai case, demanding a thorough verification of all documentation. Thenmozhi, the bureau's regional deputy director, was unequivocal about the animal's status under the CITES agreement. The lar gibbon is classified as a protected species under this agreement, and they should only be handled as protected animals, she remarked.

The actor’s public relations team has promised a statement if and when Vikram decides to speak. Until then, the silence is filled by the rustling of paperwork as forestry officials attempt to untangle a web of adoption certificates and missing permits. The allure of exotic pets remains strong among those with the means to acquire them, but broadcasting such acquisitions to millions of followers guarantees an unwelcome level of official scrutiny. The gibbon, meanwhile, remains at the centre of a bureaucratic storm, a fuzzy casualty of the modern compulsion to secure the ultimate social media accessory.

Written by Sandy van Dongen sandy.vandongen@alpineweekly.com