India captors beat young elephant with canes breaking its hind leg

In a disturbing and shocking event in India, a video has garnered viral status as a young elephant is shown being savagely beaten by its India captors to be used in the tourism trade.

According to the Daily Mail, regular beatings are common in India by elephant keepers to remind the animals to be subservient and frightened so that the animals will obey in tourist activities of riding, painting, football, tightrope walking and other close contact activities. The torture, known in India as “ketti azhikkal” is used as elephants come out of their mush period – mating season and the increase in testosterone in the animals, to “remind them who is in charge.”

In the shocking footage, the young elephant’s front leg is tied to a tree; three men continually beat the animal with canes until the elephant collapses to the ground. Even then, the torturers don’t stop lashing the animal; that is until their weapons snap in half.

In a response to the cruelty and online outrage after the release of the video, the animal charity organization, Save the Asian Elephants (STAE) issued the following statements:

“The elephant was beaten so badly it’s leg was broken, as were all the sticks used in the beating. The whole of humanity is shamed by this depravity to an innocent creature and a highly endangered species. It does all it can to obey yet the beatings continue.”

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