Temple elephant violence is common in South India – and the law is to blame

Images and videos have gone viral of an elephant going on a rampage during a pooram or temple festival in Kerala on January 8. The male elephant, which was nearly 50 years old, left 24 people injured. The incident has reignited concerns among wildlife rights activists about the unsafe conditions under which elephants are paraded during poorams in Kerala.

The disaster occurred less than a month after the Supreme Court stayed a Kerala High Court order that had called for stricter safety measures for parading elephants at temple festivals.

This was the latest in many documented cases of violence by elephants at festival in recent years as well as conflict between humans and captive elephants – that is, elephants owned by humans. Experts have pointed – and several court judgements have acknowledged – that this is due to the cruel and abusive treatment meted out to captive elephants in order to train them to perform at cultural and social events.

Wildlife rights experts that Scroll spoke to said that elephants are among the hundreds of wild animals accorded the maximum protection under the Wildlife Protection Act. But exemptions under the law only for elephants facilitate the illegal capture and trade of elephants. This perpetuates, instead of limiting, the population of elephants held in captivity.

Distinct legal status

The Asiatic elephant has been given maximum legal protection in India since 1977, when it was added to Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act. Declared India’s National Heritage Animal, it is also listed as an endangered species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List.

Schedule I of the act lists 597 wild animals. These animals are granted the highest level of legal protection. This includes prohibitions on hunting, poaching and illegal trade. Any attempt to harm or capture these animals is a punishable offence. Their habitats are safeguarded and conservation measures are encouraged.

However, the act dilutes the safeguards only for elephants through certain provisions.

Firstly, a 2002 amendment restricted the trade or transfer of captive animals listed in Schedule I, except in cases of inheritance. Anyone inheriting such a captive animal must declare the inheritance to the government within 90 days. However, elephants are left out of this protective regime. This means that elephants can be legally acquired, possessed and transferred not only through inheritance but also through gifting or any non-commercial transfer.

A study by the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau as well as media reports have revealed that elephants are often rented or gifted in return for money, particularly to southern Indian states as a result of demand by temples. The bureau report noted, in the context of the transfer of elephants, that “state agencies cannot ensure a truly non-commercial transaction between any two parties”.

Secondly, a 2022 amendment to the act permits the transfer or transport of a captive elephant, by a person having a certificate of ownership for the animal, for “religious or any other purpose”. The wide amplitude of the term “religious or any other purpose”, without any guidelines as to what it encompasses, is contrary to the protectionist purpose of the act, legal scholars have argued. It also runs counter to a 2010 recommendation of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests’ Elephant Task Force to phase out the private ownership of elephants.

Last year, the Union government notified the Captive Elephant (Transfer or Transport) Rules, 2024 to regulate the transfer and transport of captive elephants. These rules have been criticised by animal rights organisations for containing ambiguities that may allow the illegal trade and exploitation of elephants.

The rules, for example, enabled the transfer of an elephant from Assam to a temple in Delhi. Although this was soon stayed by the Delhi High Court, upon being approached by animals rights groups.

A public interest litigation filed in 2023 challenged the 2002 amendment before the Gauhati High Court on the ground that it created an unreasonable and arbitrary exception only for elephants. The 2022 amendment and the 2024 rules were also challenged before the Delhi High Court last year for transferring lawmaking powers to wildlife wardens beyond reasonable or constitutional limits.

Both matters are pending adjudication before the High Courts.

Scale of problem

The legal loopholes created for elephants have led to not only the commodification of captive elephants but also the illicit capture of wild elephants that are then taken captive.

According to the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change’s response to an application under the Right to Information Act, India has 2,675 captive elephants. Of these, 1,821 are in private custody, while the remainder are in zoos or with state forest departments. Of the 1,821 elephants in private custody, 723 either lack ownership certificates or have applications still under review.

But the government’s data has been described as unreliable by wildlife experts.

Most captive elephants were microchipped in 2002 as part of a government initiative to identify and maintain a database of captive elephants in India.

However, it has been reported that when captive elephants die, their microchips are taken and tagged on to elephants captured from the wild to reclassify them as captive. Elephant traders are also able to arrange for illicit ownership certificates and microchips for elephants captured from the wild, media reports show.

The 2024 rules mandate the digitisation of the genetic profiles of captive elephants. However, the exercise is far from being completed for all captive elephants. Without such a genetic profile pool, it would be impossible to verify whether an elephant is captive or not, Bharati Ramachandran, chief executive officer of the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations, told Scroll. “Today, nothing stops someone from claiming that an elephant was born in captivity even if it was captured from the wild,” she said.

Indeed, the 2010 report of the government’s Elephant Task Force noted that most captive elephants are born in the wild. These elephants are often used in circuses, as tourist rides, by religious institutions for festivals or by mendicants seeking alms.

The capture of wild elephants and their easy transfer across the country, aided by the loose legal provisions governing captive elephants, is fuelled by demand from temples, especially in southern India.

These elephants are tortured to train them to perform at religious and social events. “Their torture is linked to private ownership and profit maximisation,” lawyer, activist and researcher Alok Hisarwal Gupta told Scroll.

They are subjected to physical and mental abuse to break their spirit and then made to perform repeatedly in stressful situations marked by excessive noise, bright lights or other unpleasant stimuli, according to wildlife rights activists.

This is what causes elephants at these functions to regularly run amok.

According to data shared by animal rights organisations with Scroll, there have been 60 violent incidents involving elephants in the last two pooram festivals. Captive elephants have reportedly killed 196 people in Kerala alone between 2011 and 2023. And as the Kerala High Court has noted, of the over 500 recorded captive elephants in the state, 154 have died since 2018.

Pakkath Sreekuttan, the elephant at the centre of the violence on January 8, had also injured many people in April 2024 at another event and had been temporarily suspended from parades. Yet, in a manner reminiscent of the lack of effective scrutiny of captive elephants, he returned to the parades within months.

Court interventions

Acknowledging the cruelty and abuse suffered by captive elephants, a Kerala High Court bench of Justices AK Jayasankaran Nambiar and Gopinath P, in a judgement in November, called the elephants’ lives an “eternal Treblinka”. Treblinka was an extermination camp operated in Poland by Nazi Germany during World War II.

The High Court issued safety guidelines for parading elephants at a pooram. These include limiting the number of elephants based on available space, maintaining minimum distances between them, restricting daily walks to 30 km, and ensuring rest, nutrition and proper food.

In September, the same bench had, on grounds of ill treatment and lack of care of captive elephants in Kerala, stayed the movement of captive elephants into the state from elsewhere under the 2024 rules.

In 2021, the Madras High Court had ordered the Tamil Nadu government, on similar grounds, that no new elephants shall be taken into captivity – that is, taken into private ownership.

Last month, the Supreme Court had, on appeal, stayed the Kerala High Court’s November guidelines regarding elephants at pooram for going beyond the present law. Calling the guidelines “impractical”, the apex court had reasoned that devotees were voluntarily taking the risk of going in the proximity of elephants who may turn violent.

Wild not domesticated

An urgent reform needed in the governance of elephants is to remove the distinction between captive and wild elephants, Alok Gupta told Scroll. “This is a very flawed understanding of elephants,” he said. “All elephants are wild animals. They cannot be domesticated.”

Khushboo Gupta, Director of Advocacy Projects at the animal rights organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, India, had a more elementary question. “Why are elephants allowed to be kept in captivity?” she asked.