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The Supreme Court on Thursday (November 5) expressed concern over the allegedly hurried inter-state transfer of captive elephants, including one that was transported nearly 3,000 km to Chennai within nine days, raising questions about whether the statutory procedures governing such movements had been followed, The Print reported.
According to the report, a bench comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi was hearing a petition filed by the NGO People for Cattle in India, which challenged the procedure followed by authorities for the transfer of these captive elephants.
According to a social media post on X by Bar and Bench, senior advocate Meenakshi Arora, appearing for the petitioner, told the court that the statutory framework governing the inter-state movement of captive elephants requires several stages of verification, clearances and consultations, a process that ordinarily takes a minimum of around 50 days.
However, in this case, the transfer request was made on September 4 and the elephant reached Chennai by September 13, covering a distance of nearly 3,000 kms in just nine days, she said.
According to this report by The News Minute, the elephant at the centre of the case is Durga, a five-year-old elephant transported from Assam to the Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai. In September 2026, Seva Trust, a religious charity run by Anuradha Subramanian, wife of Vaidyanathan Krishnamoorthy, “gifted” the elephant to the temple.
TNM reported that Krishnamoorthy is known in Tamil Nadu’s legal circles as “Judicial Krishnamoorthy”. He is believed to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah. A relative told the publication that he had helped Shah with legal matters and that his proximity to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership helped secure him a place on the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) board. The report also noted that Krishnamoorthy is a director of Chennai-based Katas Properties, which shares its address with Seva Trust.
Anuradha’s Seva Trust also donated four more elephants – three pre-adolescent and one barely adolescent – to temples in Nagapattinam, Kanchipuram and Tiruvannamalai, the report stated.
TNM reported that a number of activists, forest officers and biologists in North-East India, Tamil Nadu and elsewhere have condemned these transfers on various grounds ranging from the trauma of the travel, to what awaits these elephants once pressed into temple servitude to larger questions about their origins.
In her argument, Arora said it was not possible to complete all the verifications and procedural requirements prescribed under the rules within such a short period. She also pointed out that the high court had only directed the authorities to decide the pending application and had not ordered the elephant to be transported within any specified timeframe.
“We are on the statutory framework,” Arora told the bench, explaining that the rules laid out a detailed procedure for moving an elephant from one state to another.
Seeking interim protection, she said the speed with which the clearances had been granted raised serious questions about compliances with the legal requirements. She also referred to a tabular chart she had prepared showing how the clearances were issued.
The bench, however, noted that all the elephants in question had already been transferred and indicated that it could not order their return since “they cannot suffer the torture.”
“If it was a hasty exercise and it was brought to our notice, we would have interdicted it,” Chief Justice Surya Kant said, referring to the court’s earlier interventions concerning captive elephants.
The chief justice also recalled that the Supreme Court had been concerned about the issue since around 2021 and had issued directions requiring verification of the identity and ownership of captive elephants. The court had also restrained the capture of wild elephants and called for an audit and inventory of existing captive elephants, including how they were being transported and treated.
“Neither the high court nor any state government can operate contrary to the directions we have already issued,” the bench said.
Arora also raised concerns about another case involving elephants in temples. She argued that a high court order barring elephants from temples went beyond what the law allowed and said the issue needed to be examined in light of the rules and the Supreme Court’s earlier directions.
The bench asked her to raise the matter through an application in the ongoing case instead of filing a separate petition.
Read investigative journalist M Rajshekhar's story published in TNM about how the hasty transfer of elephants raises questions over their ownership, origins and the approvals.
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