A large number of emerging infectious diseases are known to be zoonotic in origin. In the last two decades, many viruses have been identified from bat species1. Bats have been recognized as the natural reservoirs of a variety of pathogenic viruses such as Rabies, Hendra, Marburg, Nipah and Ebola virus2. Bats are known to harbour coronaviruses (CoVs) and serve as their reservoirs. Alpha-CoV (α-CoV) and beta-CoV (β-CoV) have been detected in bats in Asia, Europe, Africa, North and South America and Australasia3. In the last two decades, bat CoVs (BtCoVs) garnered considerable attention as potential human pathogens45. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2 causing the current pandemic [CoV disease 2019 (COVID-19)] is also a member of the same genus and found to be similar to bat-derived CoV strain RATG136. SARS-CoV-2 is reported to be 96 per cent identical to BtCoV at the whole genome level, and related viruses were identified in the previously sampled bat population in China7.