Bengaluru: On Monday, September 15, the Supreme Court absolved Vantara of any charges of wrongdoing.It held that Vantara – the Reliance-owned zoo, rescue and rehabilitation centre in Jamnagar, Gujarat – has not committed any illegalities in its operations or functioning, and that all allegations levelled against it, including those around illegal smuggling of wildlife, fudged import permits and financial impropriety, were baseless. The court then closed all complaints and petitions pertaining to this.The court’s order followed a 20-day probe by a four-member Special Investigation Team (SIT), constituted on August 25, which coordinated with at least 16 agencies including the Central Bureau of Investigation, visited Vantara to see the facility and submitted its report on September 12.However the Supreme Court chose to not make the report – submitted in a sealed cover by the SIT – public.Why is the report not public?In its order dated September 15, a bench comprising Justices Pankaj Mithal and P.B. Varale noted that the SIT’s report had found that all allegations against Vantara are “without merit”, “baseless” and “unfounded”. These included allegations of illegal smuggling of wildlife, financial impropriety and more. The order also held that Vantara had not violated any Indian or international laws, including the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).In its order, the bench directed that the SIT report be “re-sealed and kept confidential”. Only its summary — which the bench said was “exhaustive” and “does not carry comparable sensitiveness or attract the same degree of confidentiality but provides a faithful account of the conclusions reached by the SIT” – would be made public.Meanwhile, the bench directed that Vantara, the respondent, be given a copy of the entire report. “The proceedings of the report of the SIT i.e., its report and annexures including the pen drive be re-sealed and kept confidential but complete copy of the same be furnished to the respondent – Vantara, may be electronic copy of the same for its own use and record subject to an undertaking that it shall not be disclosed to third parties,” the order read.The full report has not been made available even to the petitioner, The Wire has learnt.Against this backdrop, questions are being raised about why the SIT report is being kept confidential.One reason is the “commercially confidential information” that Vantara’s lawyer, Harish Salve, told the court that the report may contain, and that it therefore should not be made public. The Hindu reported that when the bench suggested that it would make the SIT report part of the order, solicitor general Tushar Mehta – who represented the state of Gujarat – also argued that this need not be done.A source who is familiar with the matter told The Wire that the SIT, in its 197-query questionnaire to Vantara, had asked for detailed financial information — such as financial transactions, salaries, bonuses and more. Since these are perhaps part of the detailed 25,000-page report, they cannot be shared with the public to uphold Vantara’s Right to Privacy.However, it is not clear why the court chose not to redact such information and make the rest of the report public.Absolutely shocking & disappointing that the SIT headed by Justice Chelameswar submitted its report on Vantara in a SEALED cover! This is the same judge who refused to attend Supreme Court collegium meetings because of lack of transparency. How the mighty have fallen! https://t.co/jMkUzD4wlE pic.twitter.com/kOowu11ylb— Anjali Bhardwaj (@AnjaliB_) September 15, 2025The submission of the SIT report in a sealed cover to the Supreme Court has also been under fire from RTI activists. This is because the court has said that sealed covers ought to be used only in a “small exception” of cases, per a report by The Hindu: Rule 7 of Order XIII of the Supreme Court Rules, 2013 states that the chief justice or the court can direct any document to be kept confidential in a sealed cover if publication of the records is “considered to be not in the interest of the public”.Speed of proceedings also raises questionsFrom start to finish, the Supreme Court heard the petition against Vantara, constituted a SIT, obtained its report and passed an order – all in a span of less than a month.The bench first heard two petitions regarding Vantara on August 14. It re-heard the petitions on August 25, and constituted an SIT on the same day. Listing out specific aspects that it wanted the SIT to look into, the court asked the SIT to file its report by September 12. Normally, SITs can take months, or even years, to file their reports.This speed in taking up the cases pertaining to Vantara comes even as the Supreme Court is battling a huge backlog. According to a report by The Hindu on September 15 – the same day that the court gave its order regarding the SIT and Vantara – pendency (i.e. matters awaiting settlement) in the Supreme Court “reached an all-time high in recent years” with 88,417 cases. This despite the fact that the court is currently functioning with its full, sanctioned strength of 34 judges. ‘Measures’ suggested by the SITThe order passed by Justices Mithal and Varale on September 15 also says that Vantara should implement the “measures” suggested by the SIT report.“The respondent – Vantara and the concerned authorities are directed to consider and implement the measures suggested by the SIT,” the order read.Petitioner C.R. Jaya Sukin, an advocate in the Supreme Court, told The Wire that he plans to file a miscellaneous application in the court to obtain at least this specific excerpt from the SIT report, if not the entire report.When The Wire asked Sukin whether he is satisfied with the summary report of the SIT, he said that he had “objections” and felt that the SIT may have missed some angles. However, he would be able to say what these angles are only after he reads the entire SIT report. Despite being the petitioner in the case, the SIT report is not accessible to him either (while, ironically, the respondent Vantara has access to it).Access to the full report becomes all the more important given that the September 15 order also says that the SIT had covered the “entire range of allegations” that the court had asked it to look into.“The SIT during the inquiry covered the entire range of allegations not only concerning acquisition of animals, smuggling, laundering, but also regarding welfare and husbandry, conservation and breeding, climatic and location issues, and financial and trade improprieties,” the order read.The summary report submitted by the SIT has commented on Vantara’s conservation efforts:“Vantara entities GZRRC/RKTEWT, operating lawfully and at international standards, have established a modern day “Noah’s Ark” that can (i) stabilize vulnerable / confiscated fauna, (ii) run evidence-based conservation breeding, and (iii) support reintroductions in cooperation with States and global partners.”German daily responds to SIT summaryAccording to its summary report, the SIT also spoke with authorities at the Kangaroo Animal Shelter and the Capital Zoo Wildlife Park based in the United Arab Emirates. A report in the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) had found that these two ‘zoos’ were ‘founded on paper’ only to make exports to Vantara. As per SZ’s research, both institutions have delivered a total of around 6,000 wild animals to Vantara, including many strictly protected species, 41 chimpanzees and 14 orangutans. Per international laws including the CITES, commercial transfers of such highly-protected species are not permitted; zoos, however, are permitted to make transfers between each other if CITES authorities of the respective countries approve them and issue permits.However the summary report by the SIT takes the submissions of both these institutions at face value – that they are not animal sellers or animal dealers because their religious duty was to stand up for animals. “The special investigators then obviously refrained from further research on the fake zoos and simply relied on the export documents issued by the national species protection authority,” SZ noted in a news report on the SIT’s findings published on September 16. “The investigators obviously did not speak with other important animal procurers, a trader from the Czech Republic, for example, who, according to SZ research, delivered more than 3,000 animals to Vantara,” SZ also said.The SZ report pointed to the SIT summary mentioning the German daily’s research on Martin Guth, a parrot breeder and founder of the Association for the Conservation of Threatened Parrots in Germany. According to the SZ, one of its previous news reports had shown clear evidence that Guth was buying highly-protected wild animals on behalf of Vantara – on the sly. While the SZ has “published chat messages from Guth, which hardly allow any other conclusion”, the SIT summary dismisses these chats as “not convincing”, the German daily noted.