The tragic lives of India's mistreated captive elephants
24th April 2018
An animal lover went to the court, seeking to put her down. The
court said the pachyderm could be "euthanised" after the vets examined
her. On Saturday afternoon, she died anyway.
Rajeshwari had led
a hard life since she was sold to the temple in the southern state of
Tamil Nadu in 1990. She would stand on stone floors for long hours to
bless devotees and perform rituals like pouring or bringing water to
the deities.
In 2004, she fell from an open truck on the way to
a "rejuvenation" camp for captive elephants and broke her leg. She
lived in pain ever since with a misshapen limb. Recently, she broke her
femur when authorities used an earthmover to flip her and treat her.
After that, say activists who visited the temple to check on her
condition, the largely disabled pachyderm just wasted to death.
Rajeshwari's
tragic story mirrors the sorry state of many of 4,000 captive elephants
in India, mostly in the states of Assam, Kerala, Rajasthan and Tamil
Nadu. India, according to a World Animal Protection report, is widely
considered the "birthplace of taming elephants for use by humans" - a
practice which began thousands of years ago. (In comparison, India has
27,000 elephants in the wild.)
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