From
this site I finally figured out where Komodo is in relation to Papua New Guinea. Hundreds of miles, maybe over thousand, to the West, with lots and lots of intervening islands which should also be reporting dragons. In short, not a likely swim by a big lizard. Can't prove it's not a surreptitious catch-and-release, of course.
True. I was thinking about that logistical problem last night, so I checked to see if there were any reports of Komodos on Papau itself and found this:
The Komodo Dragon
(A monitor of New Guinea, Varanus salvadorii, also known as the Papua monitor, may be longer than the lengthiest Komodo dragons. The former's lithe body and lengthy tail, however, leave it short of the thickset, powerful dragon in any reasonable assessment of size.)