A woman has been arrested for allegedly keeping a baby lion in her hotel room.
Chern Min is also accused of displaying the cub – named Nong Kiwi – in the cafe she owns.
The police launched an investigation after a tourist filmed a little lion in the eatery and claimed it was an act of cruelty.
Cops then showed up at the cafe in Rassada on the Thai island of Phuket to carry out a search on Tuesday (13 Feb).
Although the baby lion wasn’t there, a worker admitted that it had been there the previous week.
The police then quizzed Chinese national Min, 31.
She escorted officers to her room in a hotel situated behind the cafe.
She is accused of buying the lion in the Thai capital Bangkok for £5,511 (THB 250,000).
The suspect said she took it to her cafe for two or three hours a day.
However, the two-month-old female cub was seized after she failed to provide a necessary permit for owning such an animal.
The police handed it over to a local wildlife sanctuary.
The suspect has been charged with two counts of violating the Wildlife Conservation and Protection Act.
The authorities withheld the woman’s name and blurred her face in images.
The police probe is ongoing.
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