“Betrayal of Elephant Madhuri”: PETA India Exposes Math’s Plan to Rip Madhuri from Elephant Company and Jail Her in Same Bleak Shed Where She Lived Chained

For Immediate Release:

19 June 2026

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Mumbai — At a press conference held today, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals India (PETA India) exposed a plan orchestrated by Kolhapur’s Nandini Math—officially Shree Swastishree Jinsen Bhattarak Pattacharya Mahaswami Sansthan Math (Karvir), Nandani—to nullify and reverse the Bombay High Court and Supreme Court-ordered rehabilitation of elephant Madhuri (also known as Mahadevi) for her physical and psychological needs, after having misled the public with claims regarding her proposed future care.

PETA India revealed that an application has been submitted to the Supreme Court-appointed High Powered Committee (HPC) by Kolhapur’s Nandini Math to rip Madhuri from her vast forested new home at Radhe Krishna Temple Elephant Welfare Trust (RKTEWT), commonly referred to as Vantara, and from the new elephant company that she relies on for her psychological well-being. The application seeks to imprison Madhuri back in the same bleak shed at the Math where she lived alone, in chains, for 33 years, and where loneliness and frustration drove her to violence. Madhuri was ordered to be seized due to the Nandini Math’s inability to meet her social, environmental, and physical needs. As a result of these conditions, Madhuri killed the Math’s chief priest in 2017 and attacked a man during a procession in 2022.

Specifically, she was directed to be permanently rehabilitated at RKTEWT by orders of the HPC dated 3 June 2025 and the Bombay High Court dated 16 July 2025, which were upheld by the Supreme Court. At each stage, cognizance was taken of the physical and psychological distress suffered by Madhuri on the Math premises, resulting in ailments including chronic foot disease, arthritis, and behavioural signs of trauma resulting from pain and prolonged solitary confinement.

Photographs and video of the elephant Mahadevi during her time at Nandini Math are available upon request.

“There is no jivdaya in tearing Madhuri away from the hospital services and elephant company she so desperately needs and forcing her back into solitary confinement. Doing so would wholly reverse any health progress she has made,” says Khushboo Gupta, Vice President of Policy, PETA India. “Attempts to send her back to the very place where she suffered for decades is a grave betrayal of her and of court orders that recognise her right to have her physical and psychological needs met as a living, thinking, feeling, social being.”

After being relocated, Madhuri began receiving specialised veterinary care and was able to live in the company of other elephants for the first time in decades, essential for female elephants who, in nature, live in multi-generational family herds. Vantara reports show Madhuri is now deeply bonded to another rescued elephant in Jamnagar, seeks her company, and they participate in activities together, attend joint hydrotherapy sessions, and communicate in rumbles and trumpets.

Despite assurances in the media in 2025 by the Maharashtra government and Vantara (which suffered an orchestrated attack on its parent company, Reliance, for caring for Madhuri) of a state-of-the-art satellite Vantara facility to be established in Maharashtra, no such facility is being planned either for Madhuri or any other elephant. To appease the public who want the best for Madhuri’s welfare, public promises were made for a Kolhapur centre equipped with 24/7 medical facilities and a “specialised hydrotherapy pond for joint and muscular relief, a…larger water body for swimming and natural movement, [and] a laser therapy and treatment room for physical rehabilitation”. The new application submitted to the HPC by the Math proves this to be fiction, with plans to jail Madhuri in the same shed she was confined to, alone, for decades, but now adjacent to a newly planned public road.

Madhuri suffers from serious, irreversible health conditions like chronic foot and bone diseases that still require continued specialized veterinary treatment and monitoring—conditions developed from a lifetime on concrete at the Math. Yet, the Math proposes to transfer her some 30 hours by road from Jamnagar to the Math, away from the hospital and veterinary facilities.

PETA India stated that, while the HPC has not approved her return and the Bombay High Court’s direction for her rehabilitation remains in force, public announcements have nevertheless been made promising her relocation back to Kolhapur by the Math and Vantara (presumably under duress), raising concerns regarding compliance with judicial orders and the prioritisation of Madhuri’s welfare. PETA India has filed objections to this proposal before the HPC, praying for Madhuri’s continued and permanent residence at Vantara, in accordance with previous judicial orders.

PETA India—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information about PETA India, please visit PETAIndia.com or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

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