Richa Chadha Teams Up With PETA India To Stop Deadly Collisions Between Elephants and Trains

Just in time for World Elephant Day (12 August) and motivated by a recent incident in which a group of elephants was fatally hit by a speeding train in Odisha, award-winning actor Richa Chadha sent a letter to the Honourable Minister of Coal and Railways Shri Piyush Goyal on PETA India’s behalf calling on the Ministry of Railways to implement safety measures to combat the huge number of elephants deaths on train tracks.

Chadha notes in her letter, Asian elephants are considered to be endangered, and there are – at most – only 50,000 of them left worldwide. Yet between 2016 and 2017, dozens of them were killed in India because of trains, and over the years, the number of these types of deaths has been increasing. In a span of 23 years – from 1987 to 2010 – 150 elephants died while crossing railway tracks, but in only eight years, from 2009 to 2017, 120 were killed in the same way.

Chadha’s previous work for PETA India– includes appearing in a dress made of lettuce in a 2014 campaign encouraging fans to go vegetarian. And in 2015, she wrote to the traffic police regarding concerns over horses who were made to give rides in Mumbai.

Want to help elephants? Here’s one way how: