Bangkok : Thai wildlife officials have discovered 40 dead cubs inside a freezer at a controversial “tiger temple” which has been locked in a long-running dispute with authorities and animal rights groups, police said Wednesday.
Wildlife officials found the tiger cubs during a continuing operation to remove dozens of adult cats from the Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua temple in the western province of Kanchanaburi.
“We found 40 tiger cubs today, they were aged about one or two days when they died but we don’t quite know yet how long they have been dead,” police colonel Bandith Meungsukhum, a local officer, told AFP.
Adisorn Noochdumrong, the deputy head of Thailand’s parks department, said they would file charges against the temple for keeping the carcasses without permission.
“A keeper said he was told to place the carcasses when they died in cold storage,” he told AFP.
The temple has long proved a hit among mainly foreign visitors who flock there to be photographed — for a fee — next to the scores of exotic feline pets.
Wildlife officials say the whole complex is illegal and have battled the monks for years to try and close it down. The dispute has been complicated by the fact that secular Thai authorities are often reluctant to intervene in the affairs of the clergy.
