Vietnamese police have found two dead tigers inside freezers in a man’s basement, arresting him and another for illicit trade in the endangered animal, the force said Saturday.
The Southeast Asian country is a consumption hub and popular trading route for illegal animal products, including tiger bones which are used in traditional medicine.
Police in Thanh Hoa province, south of the capital Hanoi, said they had found the frozen bodies ot two adult tigers, weighing about 400 kilograms (882 pounds) in total, in the basement of 52-year-old man Hoang Dinh Dat.
In a statement posted online, police said the man told officers he had bought the animals for two billion dong ($77,000), identifying the seller as 31-year-old Nguyen Doan Son.
Both had been arrested earlier this week, police said.
According to the statement, the buyer had equipment to produce so-called tiger bone glue, a sticky substance believed to heal skeletal ailments.
Tigers used to roam Vietnam’s forests, but have now disappeared almost entirely.