PETA India Celebrates 2024: Year of the Elephant
In China, 2024 was the Year of the Dragon but, at PETA India, it was the year of the elephant!
More than a dozen celebrities signed our government appeal for elephants to be protected from use in performances. At Amer Fort, PETA India secured and released video footage of traumatized elephants going into violent rages of frustration from captivity and maltreatment. We wrote to Rajasthan’s Minister of Tourism, calling for the rehabilitation of these individuals. And after an intense campaign, abused elephant Malti was transferred from Amer Fort to a sanctuary, where she finally lives in the company of other rescued elephants.
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And, after hearing from PETA India, a Supreme Court committee recommended that 55-year-old captive elephant, Pratima, and her calf, who were being illegally kept and abused, be transferred to a sanctuary too. And they too were rescued!
Harnessing the wonders of modern technology, PETA India initiated the campaign of mechanical elephants hoping that one day all real elephants free from their sad lives of enslavement and live happily with families in their natural habitat. This year, PETA India, along with Samyukta Hornad and Compassion Unlimited Plus Action, gifted life-size robot elephant, named Niranjana, for use in the government temple Sri Siddalingeshwara Swamy in Yedeyur, Karnataka. The Thrikkayil Mahadeva Temple in Kochi welcomed mechanical Mahadevan, gifted by PETA India and Priyamani. Aindrita Ray and Diganth Manchale joined PETA India in donating Shiva to Mysuru’s Sri Suttur Math. And Adah Sharma helped us deliver Baladhasan to Thiruvananthapuram’s Pournamikavu Temple. Actor Vedhika and award-winning child actor Sreepath Yan supported PETA India in donating Kannur’s first life-size mechanical elephant, Vadakkumbad Sankaranarayanan, to the Edayar Sree Vadakkumbad Shiva Vishnu Temple in recognition of the temple’s decision never to own or hire live elephants. Veerabhadra was donated by Shilpa Shetty Kundra, along with non-governmental organisations PETA India and CUPA. With this innovative project, temple authorities can preserve deep cultural traditions while allowing sensitive, intelligent elephants to remain in the jungle with their families. This makes them joyful and makes PETA India joyful, too!
Meanwhile, our other mechanical elephant, our talking teacher, Ellie, voiced by Dia Mirza, visited 157 schools in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi-NCR, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Hyderabad, and Jaipur to tell 1,51,232 children the story of how elephants lose their freedom, how important it is for them to treat animals with respect, and how it’s imperative that they never attend circuses that exploit animals, or go on elephant rides.
Helping Horses, Buffaloes, Parakeets & All Animals
It’s not just elephants, of course! PETA India helped horses, buffaloes, parakeets, dogs and other animals too!
Actor Rupali Ganguly joined PETA India to call for an end to horse-drawn carriages in Kolkata. After a wounded mare and foal were found covered in blood on the road there, we filed a first information report with the local police, which paved the way for their rescue through PETA India to join other horses rescued from the trade at a sanctuary. Thanks to our efforts and that of a local group, the Calcutta High Court directed the West Bengal government to put forward a proposal to provide horse owners with an alternative livelihood, inspired by progress in Mumbai. In Mumbai, following a PETA India campaign, beautiful heritage-style e-carriages have replaced horse-drawn carriages.
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Dozens of PETA India supporters gathered at Jantar Mantar in Delhi wearing horns and draped in blood-red veils to symbolize the pain and suffering bulls are subjected to during spectacles like races, fights, and jallikattu. And from demonstration to action, through a petition filed by PETA India, the Karnataka government determined that the Kambala buffalo racing event publicly reported to be conducted in Bengaluru in late October would not take place.
In Sangli and Mumbai, PETA India collaborated with police to shut down illegal horse races. As a result, 10 horses were sent to a sanctuary for care. And when we learned about illegal bullock cart racing in Palakkad, we filed a police report and six organizers were booked on charges. In fact, in 2024, over 500 animal abusers faced police action due to our intervention. PETA India’s Delhi mechanization project replacing bull and horse carts with electronic rickshaws also reached a landmark, rescuing our 150th animal from hard labour.
Our rescue work was vigorous in 2024, as we saved almost 2000 parakeets and other birds from lonely lives in cages by recovering them from illegal traders through police raids in Delhi, Kanpur, and Jamshedpur. Among other animals rescued were eight dogs living in deplorable conditions in a dump yard in Mumbai. And we worked with the division forest office in Aurangabad to rescue a monkey living in a dingy cage. In 2024, PETA India also replied to over 1000 calls a day regarding animal emergencies, and conducted a sterilisation program that brought the total number of cats we have sterilised in Mumbai to 5000.
Ending Mandatory Animal Testing in Drug Development
PETA India continued to advance modern science in 2024, too. India ended mandatory animal testing in drug development—a move we have long advocated. We teamed with Simcology and Ex-Pharm to offer virtual simulation and computer learning software for free to pharmacology educators. The Indala Institute of Pharmacy signed an agreement with PETA India to end all experiments on animals formerly required in its pharmacology education classes and switched to advanced, human-relevant methods instead. And in New Delhi, our unmissable giant monkey urged the government to strengthen protection for rhesus macaques, who are abused in animal experiments.
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Shielding Small Animals from Dangerous Manja and Glue Traps
No animal is too small for PETA India to help. Following our direct appeals, over 30 states have , and retailers—like Amazon India and Snapdeal—have stopped selling them. After hearing from us, the Animal Welfare Board issued an advisory against manja, the razor-sharp kite string that injures and even kills birds and humans. Goa and Karnataka were the latest to ban it.
Our Corporate Footprint in Animal Advocacy
PETA India’s corporate footprint was big in 2024 for animal rights in other ways. Following an appeal from PETA India, Paytm Insider removed ads featuring animal circuses. Allen Solly launched a PETA-approved vegan handbag collection, and PETA India gave its blessing to sugarcane leather brand Vegan Virya and vegan fashion company, Virgio, created by the former CEO of Myntra. Adah Sharma starred in a PETA India horror campaign exposing the cruelty of leather, which received well over half-a-million hits on social media. Fashion is going vegan, and the world is better for it.
Advocating for Animal Rights and a Vegan Diet Across India
We challenged people to ask themselves: If you wouldn’t eat a cat, why eat a fish? A PETA India “catmonger” made this point in Kochi. To remind people that fish feel pain, and that fishing also kills turtles, PETA India erected educational billboards in Bhubaneswar, Mangaluru, Puducherry, Thiruvananthapuram, and Visakhapatnam.
A dog meat scare prompted our pro-vegan billboard in Bengaluru. But our most attention-grabbing, head-turning billboards may have been in honor of World Environment Day, where we offered a stark message: Go Vegan or We all Die. The production of meat and dairy accounts for about 60% of all food-related greenhouse gas emissions. Or for World Vegan Month, during which we erected billboards letting the public know, “Because You Consume Dairy, Calves Die.” A media blitz reminded the public that the dairy industry separates newborn calves from their mothers screaming “They scream for ice cream.” PETA India’s video exposing the real cost of dairy received more than 3.8 million views on social media. And we continue to make our presence felt across the Internet—with over 2 million followers on Facebook, Instagram, and X.
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Advertising firm LytAds helped us take animal rights to the streets with our Diana Penty adoption campaign. Our billboards about pugs reminded passersby that while humans may have a choice when it comes to the shape of their nose, flat-faced dogs do not—and breeding animals to have a squashed snout interferes with their breathing and condemns them to misery all their lives. We also awarded director Richie Mehta a Tech, Not Terror award for using cutting-edge CGI instead of live animals in Poacher, his series about an elephant ivory poaching ring.
And to promote the core compassionate message to end speciesism, our billboards that read, “Every Animal is Someone,” featuring images of chickens, goats, pigs, and more, encouraged people to eat cruelty-free.
Inspiring Compassion in Young Hearts
PETA India, partner organizations and volunteers held over 1000 Compassionate Citizen humane education workshops reaching more than 50,000 students across India with the messages of empathy and respect for animals. Schoolchildren helped PETA India distribute water bowls for community animals in Lucknow, Surat, Mumbai, and Bhopal, and PETA India supporters and Vegans of Chhattisgarh distributed free water bowls for community animals in Raipur.
PETA Youth reached almost 4000 students at festivals and conferences, including the Vegan India Conference and Mumbai Comic Con, with engaging experiences such as our “Abduction” virtual reality encounter, which puts people in the place of animals used for experiments conducted by visiting aliens.
We Depend on Your Support for Our Work
2024 was another hugely productive year for PETA India!
Yet, we still have much more work to do to protect animals, and we’re depending on you—our supporters—in 2025 to help us achieve animal protection and to be as strong as we can be. Please visit PETAIndia.com to support our work. And thank you from all the animals!
