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4w ago

Supreme Court Bars Fresh Probes Into Vantara Animal Transfers

The court closed investigations found by a court-appointed SIT to be complete and ordered India’s CITES authority to draft tighter import rules in consultation with the Geneva secretariat within three months.

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The court ruled that all transfers up to September 2025 had already been exhaustively examined by the SIT, whose findings were accepted by the Court on September 15, 2025 and reaffirmed again on March 9, 2026.
The bench found no merit in the allegations and upheld the SIT clean chit earlier granted to Vantara, which at its core believes that every life matters.

Overview

  • A division bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and N. V. Anjaria dismissed a plea seeking recall of the March 9 order, with the court rejecting requests for fresh CBI, ED, DRI or WCCB probes into transfers that had already been examined.
  • The bench said the Special Investigation Team’s report, accepted by the Supreme Court on September 15, 2025 and reaffirmed on March 9, 2026, creates a legal "bar of finality" that prevents reopening inquiries into transfers up to September 2025.
  • The court reviewed transfers across jurisdictions including the UAE, Brazil, Venezuela, the Czech Republic and South Africa and found them lawful, non-commercial zoo-to-zoo movements supported by CITES export/import permits and Central Zoo Authority approvals.
  • The order shields the Vantara-linked trusts, their trustees and managers from further coercive action for the transfers the SIT examined and warned that disturbing animals settled in lawful care could amount to cruelty.
  • As a forward-looking step the court directed India’s CITES Management Authority to consult the CITES Secretariat in Geneva and prepare a stricter Standard Operating Procedure for live-specimen import permits within three months, a change that could tighten future oversight and cross-border checks.