After a lifetime in captivity, Laxmi, a 30-year-old elephant, has died in agony after been beaten and tortured by her cruel owners.
Laxmi’s owners can be seen attacking her with sharp spears, bull-hooks, and sticks.
The attacks occurred in a small and dank room—her prison—where she was forced to ambulate while in a deteriorating state. Her skin sagged over her bony frame and her legs caved inwards, no longer supporting the weight of her body.
She was forced to move so that the owners could earn profit from her dying and fragile body.
“We were extremely alarmed to learn of her condition, and we scrambled to get our elephant veterinarian on a plane to Bihar in eastern India to try and save Laxmi. But she’d finally given in to the agony and passed away,” Kartick Satyanaryan said.
Sadly, Laxmi’s case does not represent an uncommon practice in India. She was poached from the wild as a calf, and separated from her mother and herd.
The harsh reality of cruelty and neglect among privately-owned captive elephants has been of concern for many years.
Animal welfare organization Wildlife SOS informed the Forest Department of the situation, but when a team of officers arrived, the owners of the elephant had disappeared.
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Her captors had fled leaving the dying elephant to spend the final agonizing hours of her life lying in filth as her life ebbed out of her frail frame.
Founder of Wildlife SOS Geeta Seshamani said, “It breaks our hearts to know we could not reach Laxmi in time, but we believe that she deserves justice even if she never saw a single day of freedom.
“Such illegal trafficking, neglect, and severe abuse of elephants is intolerable, and a precedent must be set.”
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