A woman has been nicked for allegedly keeping a baby lion in her hotel room.
Chern Min is also accused of showing off the cub – named Nong Kiwi – in her own café. The police started looking into it after a tourist filmed the little lion in the eatery and claimed it was cruel.
Cops then popped over to the café in Rassada on the Thai island of Phuket to have a look around on Tuesday. Even though the baby lion wasn't there, a worker admitted that it had been there the week before.
READ MORE: Inside small Mexican town where 'joint human-alien experimental lab' lies underground
There's loads more news just to the left of the last word of this sentence.
![The woman was arrested and the club was taken from her](https://i2-prod.dailystar.co.uk/incoming/article32135329.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/1_PAY-Woman-arrested-after-keeping-lion-cub-in-hotel-room.jpg)
The police then had a chat with Chinese national Min, 31, about the lion and how she got hold of it. She then took officers to her room which was in a hotel behind the café, where the lion had previously been seen, only for officers to find it still there.
She's now been accused of buying the lion in Bangkok for £5,511 (THB 250,000), and it was later confiscated by local officials. The suspect said she took it to her café for two or three hours a day, but that appeared to be the only time that the cub actually left the tiny hotel room.
![Officials in the country handed the lion over to a wildlife sanctuary](https://i2-prod.dailystar.co.uk/incoming/article32135332.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/0_128408945jpgphuket-phiphi-isle.jpg)
However, the two-month-old female cub was taken away after she couldn't provide the right permit for owning such an animal. The police gave it to a local wildlife sanctuary, where it is now going to be cared for, with little chance of the woman getting the cub back at any point.
The suspect has now been charged with two counts of breaking the country's very strict Wildlife Conservation and Protection Act. The local authorities didn't give out the woman's name and blurred her face in pictures shared with local media outlets, and the police investigation is still going on.
For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletter by clicking here.