The tragic lives of India's mistreated captive elephants

For more than a month, Rajeshwari, a 42-year-old temple elephant in India, lay desultorily on a patch of sand, her forelimb and femur broken and her body ravaged by sores.

An animal lover went to the court, seeking to put her down. The court said the pachyderm could be "euthanised" after the vets examined her. On Saturday afternoon, she died anyway.

Rajeshwari had led a hard life since she was sold to the temple in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in 1990. She would stand on stone floors for long hours to bless devotees and perform rituals like pouring or bringing water to the deities.

In 2004, she fell from an open truck on the way to a "rejuvenation" camp for captive elephants and broke her leg. She lived in pain ever since with a misshapen limb. Recently, she broke her femur when authorities used an earthmover to flip her and treat her. After that, say activists who visited the temple to check on her condition, the largely disabled pachyderm just wasted to death.

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