Elephant Weeps While Being Rescued After 50 Years Of Confinement

This summer happened very interesting event, the elephant Raju was released after five decades of the confinement. All the time in confinement he lived with the painful shackles around the feet and treated as property. Walking the Indian dusty roads, this elephant was interacting tourists for food and coins. Raju’s was physically abused and his trauma had no limits.

Pooja Binepal of Wildlife SOS speaks about the Raju’s tragic case. Raju has been sold many times and has had up to 27 owners, who brought him to the pathetic condition. Because of improper feeding, he began to eat plastic and paper. Raju has abscesses and wounds because of his spiked shackles and continues walking on Indian’s roads. His nails were severely overgrown.

It is believed that after his abduction from his mother he suffered mistreatment. The team led by the UK-based animal charity Wildlife SOS liberated him this July. When Raju realized the team will rescue him, he began to weep.

Pooja explained that Raju was in chains 24 hours a day, which was an act of impossible brutality. During the rescue, the team was surprised to see tears roll down the elephant’s face. All present persons knew in their hearts that he realized he was being freed because elephants are highly intelligent animals.

The Raju’s unfortunate situation was reported to the team of the UK a year before they reacted. Their activities were together with the local authorities, based on proceeding the legal acts to confiscate from his keeper.

When the legal procedure was finished he was brought 350 miles away, to Wildlife SOS’s Elephant Conservation and Care Centre at Mathura. There he received proper medical care and started his happy companionship with the other rescued animals.

According to Kartick Satyanarayan, a wildlife SOS-UK founder it was an extraordinary moment. The freed elephant was kept in isolation for a week in order to receive emergency medical attention. Also, the wildlife officials struggled hard to raise money in order to allow Raju to spend the rest of his life in a new enclosure.

Satyanarayan said that all Raju has known from human beings is pain and suffering. Now the rescue team is asking to help him to live out his days, with grass under his feet — free from humiliation and pain. The experts expect a long rehabilitation process, but they will teach him that humans don’t mean pain and brutality.

Binepal believes that until they stepped in, he’d never known what it is like to walk free of his shackles.  But, what actually happened for him, today he knows what the freedom is and he will learn what kindness feels like.

He will feel the better side of humanity right now!!!