Raju the Elephant: Freed After 50 Years in Chains in India

Elephant Cries Tears Of Joy After Being Released From 50 Years Of Captivity

Raju is an Asian elephant who spent around 50 years in chains in northern India before the charity Wildlife SOS, working with the Uttar Pradesh Forest Department, freed him overnight on 3–4 July 2014. During the rescue his rescuers saw tears running down his face, and the story of the "crying elephant" spread around the world. He was taken to the Elephant Conservation and Care Centre near Mathura, where he could finally walk without shackles.

Whether those tears meant joy is something nobody can prove. What is well documented is how Raju lived before that night, how the rescue was carried out, and what scientists now say about the inner lives of elephants. Here is the full story.

Who is Raju?

Raju is a makna, a male Asian elephant that never grew tusks. Little is known about his early years. Wildlife SOS believes he was taken from the wild as a young calf and then sold on again and again; their investigation suggested he changed hands roughly every one or two years, and CNN reported that he may have had as many as 27 owners.

At one stage he was taken to the Sonpur fair in Bihar, a huge annual livestock fair where, according to Wildlife SOS, elephants have been traded illegally under the cover of "exhibition". By the time the charity found him he was living in Allahabad (now Prayagraj), in Uttar Pradesh, where he was used to beg from passers-by and pilgrims.

Fifty years in chains

Begging elephants are a familiar sight in parts of South Asia. Decorated with cloth and paint, they are walked through streets and temple towns, where people pay to touch them or receive a blessing. Behind the colourful blanket, life for Raju was harsh.

Wildlife SOS reported that he was kept chained, given very little food and beaten by his owners to keep him obedient. His legs were held with spiked shackles that cut into the skin, leaving wounds that oozed whenever he moved. His handler had even pulled out the hair of his tail to sell as good-luck charms. Wildlife SOS co-founder Geeta Seshamani summed it up in one line: "Pain and brutality were all he knew."

Elephants are a protected species under India's Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, but ownership of captive elephants has long been a legal grey area. That is part of why freeing Raju took so long.

The night of the rescue

The Uttar Pradesh Forest Department first alerted Wildlife SOS to Raju's condition about a year before the rescue. Collecting the paperwork, permits and court order needed to remove him took most of that year. As his health got worse, the team brought the operation forward by a day.

A ten-person Wildlife SOS team, led by veterinarian Dr Yaduraj Khadpekar, travelled to Allahabad with tranquilising equipment and medicine. It included elephant keepers, para-vets and a wildlife biologist, and it was backed by the local Divisional Forest Officer and a large group of forest and enforcement officers. The work ran from about 6:30 p.m. on 3 July to just after midnight on 4 July 2014.

Once Raju was loaded onto a specially fitted ten-wheel truck, a convoy escorted him on a journey of about 16 hours to the Elephant Conservation and Care Centre in Mathura, which Wildlife SOS runs with the state forest department. Along the way the team hosed him down to keep him cool and fed him bananas, jackfruit and mangoes. Only after he arrived did they begin cutting away the chains and spiked shackles.

(The video originally embedded here is no longer available on YouTube.)

Dr Rupak De, then Chief Wildlife Warden of Uttar Pradesh, welcomed the rescue, saying the elephant could now look forward to a far better life after decades of misery.

Did Raju really cry tears of joy?

This is the detail that made the story go viral. Kartick Satyanarayan, co-founder of Wildlife SOS, told CNN that Raju seemed to cry first while still under his captor's control, apparently in pain, and again after the chains came off, when the tears seemed to express relief.

"It was a very emotional moment for us, because we've never seen an elephant cry like that," he said. He was also honest about the limits of that reading, adding: "I don't know how scientific this is."

That caution is fair. Elephants do produce tears, and tears can have physical causes such as irritation, stress or simply keeping the eyes moist. Scientists cannot currently say whether an elephant cries from emotion the way a person does. So the most accurate way to tell the story is this: rescuers saw tears on Raju's face at a moment of great change in his life, and they believed he understood they had come to help. Whether those tears were joy, pain, exhaustion or something else, we can't know.

What science says about elephant emotions

Even without a definite answer on tears, the scientific picture of elephants has changed a great deal in recent decades.

Self-awareness. In a 2006 study at the Bronx Zoo in New York, an Asian elephant named Happy repeatedly touched a painted mark on her head that she could only see in a mirror, a classic test of self-recognition passed by very few species.
Grief. Field researchers have watched elephants stand over the bodies of dead family members, try to lift them and cover them with leaves and branches. Elephant researcher Cynthia Moss described a mother trailing listlessly behind her family for days after losing her calf.
Consciousness. In 2012, a group of neuroscientists signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, stating that humans are not unique in having the brain structures that produce conscious experience, and that all mammals and birds possess them. In 2024, the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, signed by more than 500 scientists and academics, went further and said it would be irresponsible to ignore the realistic possibility of consciousness when making decisions that affect animals.

None of this proves what Raju felt on the night he was freed. It does make it reasonable to assume that half a century of chains, hunger and beatings caused real suffering, and that release meant something to him.

Life after the chains

At the Mathura centre, vets treated Raju's wounds, abscesses and damaged foot pads, and put him on a proper diet. He was given his own enclosure, a pool, and the company of other rescued elephants. In an October 2014 update, Wildlife SOS said he had joined a group it calls the "herd of hope", including Phoolkali, Chanchal, Maya, Sai Geeta and Laxmi, and that he had formed a special bond with Laxmi. The two were often seen feeding each other and bathing together.

His freedom was not immediately secure. His former custodian tried to get him back, and a petition to the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in his support gathered more than 350,000 names. At the time of that update a court hearing was still pending.

What his story asks of the rest of us

Raju's case put a spotlight on the thousands of elephants still kept for begging, rides, festivals and tourist shows across Asia. A few practical lessons follow from it:

Think twice before paying for elephant rides or blessings. That money keeps the trade in captive elephants going, and training for these jobs often involves pain and fear.
Choose genuine sanctuaries. Places that allow observation rather than riding or bathing with the animals are usually a better sign of welfare.
Report cruelty. In India, elephants are protected by law, and forest departments can act when they are alerted, as Raju's case shows.

The wider question remains the one the story raised in 2014: if animals as intelligent and social as elephants can suffer this much, how should we treat them? Raju's tears made millions of people ask it.

Sources: Wildlife SOS: Raju freed after 50 years in chains; Wildlife SOS: Raju's life after rescue (October 2014); CNN: India's "crying" elephant (July 2014); Wikipedia: Elephant cognition; Wikipedia: Animal consciousness. Photos: Wildlife SOS.

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