Police officers in southern Chinese city of Fangchenggang find 37 wild monkeys during a drug bust on Sunday, April 24, 2016. [Photo:legaldaily.com]

Police in a south China city found 37 wild monkeys during a drug bust, according to local sources on Tuesday.

At about 3 a.m. Sunday, Dongxing City Police in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region received a phone call from a woman, who told them her husband was with his mistress and taking drugs. When they arrived at the scene, the suspect, identified as Jiang, was armed with a knife. Police took him into custody and seized several grams of ice.

While they were searching the house, they were drawn to an unusual smell coming from a utility room. In the room there were 20 A-class protected slow lorises and 17 B-class protected macaques.

A police officer told Xinhua that the monkeys were listless as a result of being held in captivity for a long period of time, and many had scars on their bodies.

They also found dead monkeys in the trash.

Jiang said he knew nothing about the monkeys.

But police discovered several notebooks with sales records of wild animals, which allegedly show that the monkeys were mostly sold to Anhui in east China and Liaoning in the northeast, for several thousand yuan each.

The investigation continues.