Bengaluru: In a first for India, an orangutan that was rescued in 2024 from an apartment in Thane, Maharashtra, has been repatriated to Indonesia. The five infant orangutans found abandoned in a forest in Odisha may soon follow Rocky in an “early repatriation”, India said in a statement.The three-year-old orangutan that was repatriated to Indonesia on October 19 is doing well, Indonesian conservationists told The Wire. The animal will be rehabilitated and released back into the wild in about five years, they said.While this first ever repatriation of an orangutan from India to Indonesia is very welcome, the timelines are still a worry, Indian wildlife experts said, pointing out that repatriation should be done within months of confiscating such animals from illegal wildlife trade.Rocky reaches IndonesiaIn November 2024, Maharashtra forest officials made headlines when they rescued a baby male orangutan (estimated to then be around a year old) from a small apartment in Thane near Mumbai.This was highly unusual because orangutans are not native to India: they are found only in the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. Trading these critically endangered animals is illegal as per the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES), an international treaty that India is also signatory to. Despite this, the animals are often traded illegally worldwide to be kept as pets, and housed in private collections.The one-year-old orangutan rescued from Thane was sent to the rescue centre at the Balasaheb Thackeray Gorewada International Zoological Park in Nagpur. But for over a year now, the animal has been at the Reliance-owned Vantara (or Greens Zoological Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre) in Jamnagar, Gujarat. The animal was allegedly moved to Vantara due to ill health.Rocky returned from India to Indonesia on October 19, 2026, through the efforts of wildlife protection agencies and CITES Management Authorities of both countries. Rocky’s troubles lasted for two years in India and he has a very long rehabilitation lying ahead of him in his own country. Photo: Indian embassy in Indonesia.In a post on social media platform Instagram, Vantara veterinarian Dr Sachin Patil said that the animal had difficulty breathing when they received it, and tests later revealed that it had bronchopneumonia (a kind of pneumonia that causes fluid build-up in lungs). The animal’s weak immune system also caused recurrent infections which required multiple hospitalisations, he said.The animal, named Rocky at Vantara, is now back home in Indonesia. On October 19, Indian authorities repatriated the animal to the southeast Asian country, the Indian Embassy in Indonesia said in a statement. The animal was repatriated “through the coordinated efforts of wildlife protection agencies and CITES Management Authorities of both countries”, it said.“The successful repatriation reflects the close bilateral ties between India and Indonesia and their shared commitment to the protection and conservation of endangered species, setting a positive precedent for future cooperation in wildlife conservation,” the statement read.Rocky has now been renamed Heera (which translates to “diamond” in Urdu) by an Indonesian minister as it was “precious”, reported Indian Express on October 21.Also read: Explainer: Why Orangutans in Odisha Are Bad News – For India And The WorldThe orangutan has arrived at the Sumatra Rescue Alliance (SRA), a rescue centre in North Sumatra, Indonesia, confirmed conservationist Panut Hadisiswoyo, founder of the Yayasan Orangutan Sumatera Lestari-Orangutan Information Centre in Sumatra. The YOSL-OIC is one of the co-founders of the rescue centre, which was established in 2020 to support the repatriation of orangutans confiscated from the global illegal wildlife trade.This is not a first for the rescue centre: recently, the YOSL-OIC along with other agencies repatriated four orangutans from Thailand to Indonesia and these individuals are now at the Rescue Centre for rehabilitation.The orangutan from India is currently doing well and is being looked after carefully as part of its rehabilitation process. It will be released in its forest home in the next four or five years, Hadisiswoyo told The Wire.“The repatriation was made possible because of a strong partnership between the Indonesia and Indian governments, and Vantara which looked after the orangutan for more than one year,” he said.Five infant orangutans may be repatriated tooThe return of the orangutan rescued from Thane to Indonesia is very welcome and sets a precedent that India should now follow every time, said Sumanth Bindumadhav, Director, Wildlife Protection, Humane World for Animals India.“But it took almost two years for one animal. Meanwhile, five infant orangutans abandoned in Odisha are still waiting at Nandankanan, and if reports are to be believed, the state has asked to house them there permanently. We sincerely hope those orangutans are repatriated once they’re stable as well.”Also read: Take Steps to Return Infant Orangutans Immediately If They Originated in Indonesia, Its Forestry Ministry Urges IndiaBewildered villagers in Odisha’s Balasore had found the five infants abandoned in a forested area on September 8, and state authorities had immediately rescued them. The animals, estimated to be less than a year old, are currently at the state’s Nandankanan Zoological Park in Bhubaneswar.State forest and environment minister Ganesh Ram Singhkhuntia had said on September 11 that the Odisha government had written to the Central Zoo Authority on September 9 seeking permission to retain the five orangutans at Nandankanan, as they would bring more tourist footfall.However, in its statement on October 19, India said that efforts are underway to facilitate the “early repatriation” of the five young orangutans, subject to confirmation of their species/origin and completion of necessary procedures and compliances. The Embassy of India in Jakarta is also facilitating a visit by Indonesian wildlife experts from the Ministry of Forestry of Indonesia to India in November 2026, it said.The repatriation of the orangutan rescued from Thane is a strong precedent for initiating the repatriation of the five orangutans recently trafficked to India, commented Hadisiswoyo.According to Bindumadhav, repatriation should be conducted within months of confiscating such animals from the clutches of the illegal wildlife trade.“Every orangutan kept in India rewards the trade that brought it here. As our report on the exotic pet trade shows, seizures like these are only the visible part of a much larger market fed by status-seeking buyers and social media. Repatriation should be the default, done within months, alongside prosecutions that go after the networks, not just the couriers,” Bindhumadhav told The Wire.