Which elephants were moved from Assam to Tamil Nadu?

The News Minute, in an investigation published on 2 November 2026, named five: Durga, sent to the Meenakshi temple in Madurai; Rupsing, to Vaitheeswaran Koil in Nagapattinam; Hiralal and Shiva, to the Arulmigu Anmachaleswarar Temple in Tiruvannamalai; and Bijuli, to Kanchi Kamakoti in Kanchipuram. The Hindu used the same five names in its report on a joint letter from animal welfare groups.

Who arranged the transfer?

The News Minute reported that Seva Trust, run by Anuradha Subramanian, handled the transfer, and that the elephants were presented as gifts from private owners in Assam to the temples. It said Vaidyanathan Krishnamoorthy, her husband, declined to answer questions. It also said Anuradha and the Assam government had not replied by publication.

How fast were the Tamil Nadu approvals?

The News Minute said that on 4 September 2026, Tamil Nadu's Chief Wildlife Warden Rakesh Kumar Dogra asked district officers at 1:36 pm for an inspection report within 15 days, that the Madurai district forest officer filed a report at 7 pm, and that Dogra approved Durga's transfer at 8:58 pm. Dogra told the outlet the request from Assam had arrived on 20 August, and that Tamil Nadu's role was to check the receiving temple, not to issue the transfer permit.

Did animal welfare groups object?

Yes. The Hindu reported that 53 animal welfare, wildlife and conservation groups wrote to Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay and others asking whether the five elephants were gifted, purchased or transferred, and asking for birth dates, ownership certificates and identification records to be checked. They also asked for the transfers of any further elephants to be paused, and for an independent veterinary check after the journey.

Was money paid for the elephants?

That is an allegation, not a finding. The News Minute reported that Assam Congress spokesperson Reetam Singh wrote on 21 September 2026 that the transaction amount was Rs 6 crore and that Santiago Martin had paid it for the couple. Singh told The News Minute he had heard this from government sources. The outlet said it had asked Martin, minister Aadhav Arjuna and Anuradha Subramanian for comment, and that they had not replied when the article was published.

Five Elephants Moved from Assam to Tamil Nadu Temples: The News Minute Investigation, Explained

Five young elephants travelled from Assam to temples in Tamil Nadu in September 2026. On 2 November, The News Minute published a long investigation into how that happened, who signed the papers, and which records do not line up. Separately, The Hindu has reported that 53 animal welfare groups have asked the Tamil Nadu government to check the same animals' ownership, age and acquisition.

The investigation raises hard questions. It does not, on its own, prove a sale, a wild capture, or a political order. Where a claim comes from one outlet, one unnamed person, or a political spokesperson, this piece says so.

The 60-second version

The animals: Durga, Rupsing, Shiva, Hiralal and Bijuli, moved in September 2026. The News Minute and The Hindu use the same five names.
Where they went: Madurai's Meenakshi temple, Vaitheeswaran Koil in Nagapattinam, the Arulmigu Anmachaleswarar Temple in Tiruvannamalai (two elephants), and Kanchi Kamakoti in Kanchipuram, as The News Minute reported the destinations.
Who moved them: Seva Trust, run by Anuradha Subramanian. The News Minute said the elephants were shown in Assam's paperwork as captive-born animals gifted by private owners.
The speed: The News Minute said Durga's Tamil Nadu permission on 4 September moved from an inspection order at 1:36 pm to an approval at 8:58 pm, and that she then covered about 3,000 km in six days.
The objection: The Hindu reported a joint letter from 53 groups to Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay asking how the elephants were acquired, and asking that further transfers wait.
The allegation: Assam Congress spokesperson Reetam Singh claimed a Rs 6 crore payment. The News Minute said he attributed that to government sources, and that the people named had not replied.

Who went where

The News Minute, written by M. Rajshekhar and Dhanya Rajendran and published at 12:30 pm on 2 November 2026, reported the destinations and the ages on the paperwork as follows.

Durga went to the Meenakshi temple in Madurai. The investigation described her as about five, and later as four years and seven months on the records it reviewed. Rupsing, said to be 13, went to Vaitheeswaran Koil in Nagapattinam. Hiralal, said to be 8, and Shiva, said to be 6, went to the Arulmigu Anmachaleswarar Temple in Tiruvannamalai. Bijuli, said to be 5, went to Kanchi Kamakoti in Kanchipuram.

Those ages are the ages The News Minute said the documents claim. The same investigation argued that measurements do not sit neatly with them: it said Durga, at four years and seven months, was recorded with a longer trunk than Hiralal at about seven and a half. That is the outlet's reading of the papers, not a veterinary finding published by either state.

The Hindu's report, published on 6 October 2026 and updated on 16 October, does not give the temple-by-temple list. It does name the same five elephants, and it uses a photograph of Durga.

The trust, and who would not answer

The News Minute reported that none of the four temples sourced an elephant on its own. Seva Trust wrote to Tamil Nadu's Chief Wildlife Warden and to the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments department. The outlet said the trust is run by Anuradha Subramanian, and that her husband, Vaidyanathan Krishnamoorthy, is known in Chennai's legal circles as Judicial Krishnamoorthy.

It also wrote that talk of his closeness to national BJP leaders has circulated for years, and that, in the outlet's own words before this investigation, those assertions had not amounted to more than unverified speculation. This piece does not treat that talk as established.

What The News Minute does report as a direct exchange: it sent him questions, called the next day, and he ended the call with "I am sorry. I don't want to." The outlet said it had also written to Anuradha and to Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma's office, and that those replies had not arrived when the article went out.

Anuradha's letters to Tamil Nadu officers, which The News Minute said it reviewed, cite a proposal dated 4 September 2025 to the Assam chief minister asking for one captive elephant for each temple, and say the Assam government had responded with an in-principle willingness once Tamil Nadu's clearances came. The number later rose from four elephants to five. The News Minute said it had asked the Assam government why a private trust was the route. It had not printed a reply.

How fast the papers moved

The sequence The News Minute reconstructed, and said was based on official communication it reviewed, is this.

On 9 July 2026 the trust asked Tamil Nadu for permission to bring four elephants. On 29 July it proposed a standard operating procedure for elephants in religious functions and filed a writ in the Madras High Court seeking such a procedure. Between 18 and 29 August, The News Minute reported, the five owners in Assam applied to the Assam forest department for permission to transfer the animals.

On 2 September, The News Minute reported, the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court quashed a 2023 order that had stopped Tamil Nadu temples acquiring elephants, and said donation of elephants born and raised in captivity is permissible. That account of the order is The News Minute's.

On 4 September, at 1:36 pm, principal chief conservator and chief wildlife warden Rakesh Kumar Dogra wrote to district forest officers asking for a detailed inquiry and a physical check of the temples' facilities against the Tamil Nadu Captive Elephants (Management and Maintenance) Rules, 2011. His letter, The News Minute said, asked for the report within 15 days. At 7 pm the same day, Madurai district forest officer Revti Raman submitted the inspection report for the Meenakshi temple. At 8:58 pm Dogra approved Durga's transfer. The same day, Assam's chief wildlife warden Vinay Gupta wrote to Manas National Park seeking fitness certificates for four elephants, including Durga.

On 7 September the trust told the Madras High Court it now wanted five elephants, not four. The court, The News Minute reported, told the state to decide the pending applications within a week. That night Durga was sent from Manas. She reached Madurai on 13 September. The News Minute described the trip as about 3,000 km in six days, in time for the temple's Kumbhabishekam on 17 September. The other four, it said, were dispatched by 15 September and had arrived by the 25th.

The Hindu separately described the journey the welfare groups were asking to have assessed as 3,000 km.

The speed matters because of a rule the trust itself had proposed. The News Minute quoted that draft as saying no elephant should be transported more than 125 km a day, that time on a vehicle should not exceed six hours a day, and that vehicles should be limited to 25 km per hour. At 125 km a day, The News Minute noted, 3,000 km is 24 days, not six.

Dogra disputed the idea that Tamil Nadu had fast-tracked the file. In a WhatsApp reply that The News Minute published, he said Assam's chief wildlife warden had asked Tamil Nadu to inspect the receiving temple on 20 August, and that Tamil Nadu processed it on 4 September. He said Tamil Nadu acted only after the High Court order, that its job was the facility at the temple, and that verification, health, microchipping, DNA testing, the transfer order and the permit were Assam's. Asked whether Assam had moved before the 2 September court order, The News Minute quoted him as saying that question should be put to Assam.

What the paperwork is alleged to show

Trade in elephants is not a normal sale. The News Minute's account of the law, which this piece is not relitigating from the statute, is that a transfer has to be an inheritance, a donation or a gift, and that a wild capture is prohibited, so an elephant changing hands has to be shown as born in captivity.

The investigation then listed records it said do not match that story cleanly. Each of these is The News Minute's reading unless another source is named.

Ownership certificates for Durga (24 October 2025), Hiralal (6 November 2025) and Shiva (19 November 2025) were created in a 26-day window, for elephants of different ages. Certificates for Bijuli and Rupsing were not in the public domain, the outlet said.
The Hindu reported that the 53 groups had raised the same chronology: certificates for three elephants were issued only in October and November 2025, though the recorded dates of birth were years earlier. The groups also claimed Rupsing's certificate was about seven years old despite a five-year renewal requirement. That is their claim, as The Hindu reported it.
The News Minute said the certificates for Durga, Hiralal and Shiva are provisional, and that they say they are subject to the Supreme Court's decision in WP(c) No. 743/2014, Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre versus Union of India. It said the Assam paper attached for Rupsing was an inspection report, not an ownership certificate. Dogra, it said, did not answer why Tamil Nadu accepted provisional certificates.
The News Minute said the certificates for Durga, Shiva and Rupsing record a small hole in the ear flap, and that such holes are used to capture and train young elephants. A hole on a certificate is not, by itself, a court finding that an elephant was taken from the wild.
The outlet reported that Gupta's 4 September letter to Manas, as it read the letter, sought health clearance for four of the elephants and described them as living in Manas National Park. Its question, which Assam had not answered in the piece, was why privately owned elephants were in the park.
On Bijuli's stated owner, The News Minute reported Northeast Now executive editor Mahesh Deka as saying residents of Torani, the village named for Hiteswar Moran, told a reporter they do not know anyone of that name. That is Deka's account of what residents said, carried by The News Minute.

The Rs 6 crore claim

On 21 September 2026, The News Minute reported, Assam Congress spokesperson Reetam Singh wrote that the transaction amount for the five elephants was Rs 6 crore, and that Santiago Martin had paid it on behalf of the couple. When The News Minute contacted him, he said he had heard this from government sources working in the field.

The outlet identified Martin as a lottery operator and the largest buyer of electoral bonds, and noted that his son-in-law Aadhav Arjuna is a minister in the TVK government. It said it had asked Martin, Arjuna and Anuradha to comment. It said the article would be updated when they did. No such reply appears in the investigation as published on 2 November.

A social-media post plus a spokesperson's account of unnamed government sources is not proof of a payment. It is an allegation the people named had not answered in that article.

What the welfare groups asked for

The Hindu reported the joint representation to Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay and other authorities. The 53 groups asked the state to examine ownership, acquisition and age, and to say whether the elephants were gifted, purchased or transferred. They asked for birth dates, ownership certificates, acquisition documents, no-objection certificates and identification records to be verified.

They said they had been informed that six more young elephants would soon be moved from Assam to Tamil Nadu, and they asked for further transfers to be paused until these five were examined. They asked for an independent veterinary assessment after the 3,000 km journey, and for scrutiny of the elephants' proposed use in rituals and processions. The Hindu said the signatories include People for Cattle in India and groups from Tamil Nadu, Assam and several other states.

The Hindu's report does not say the government had answered.

What to watch next

Replies The News Minute said were outstanding from the Assam government, Anuradha Subramanian, Santiago Martin and Aadhav Arjuna, and from Dogra on the provisional certificates.
Whether Tamil Nadu answers the 53 groups on gift versus purchase, on the dates of the ownership certificates, and on whether six more elephants are on the way.
The Supreme Court condition. The News Minute said three certificates are explicitly subject to WP(c) 743/2014. Any order in that case would sit on top of these transfers.
A veterinary report after the journey, which the groups requested and which neither paper had published.
Assam's microchip and parentage records. Dogra told The News Minute those checks were Assam's responsibility. The investigation said a captive-elephant register exists and is not public. Whether that register is opened is the check that would settle origin, if the records are real.

The move happened. The approvals were fast. The welfare groups have asked for the file. The payment claim and the wild-origin reading are still allegations, and the people best placed to answer them had not done so in the investigation published on 2 November.

The investigation cited throughout is The News Minute's report by M. Rajshekhar and Dhanya Rajendran, published at 12:30 pm on 2 November 2026. The account of the 53 groups is from The Hindu, published on 6 October 2026 and updated on 16 October 2026. Quotes, certificate dates, the 4 September timeline and the Rs 6 crore claim are attributed to those reports. No court has, in the pieces read here, ruled that these five elephants were captured or sold.