UPDATE #18: Shankar campaign was covered in The Times Uk - an article by Ms. Amrit Dhillon. 

A 16-year-old Indian schoolgirl has appealed to judges to release a lonely African elephant she claims is being kept in “cruel” conditions in a Delhi zoo, pining for company since the death of his mate 16 years ago.

Nikita Dhawan, who founded an animal welfare campaign group with a classmate, has petitioned Delhi’s high court to send Shankar the elephant to a sanctuary in Africa where he can mix with others of his own species.

She has secured the backing of the UK-based conservation charity the Aspinall Foundation, for whom Boris Johnson’s wife Carrie works. The foundation has offered to relocate the animal if the zoo agrees to release him and he is fit enough to travel.

Shankar was one of two African elephants gifted to India by the Zimbabwean government of Robert Mugabe in 1998. But since the death of his female companion, Bombai, in 2005, Shankar has led a solitary life at the National Zoological Park in the Indian capital.

Dhawan, a grade 11 student at the American Embassy School in Delhi, has visited Shankar many times and is upset at the small enclosure he is kept in. On one visit, he kept swaying his trunk from side to side — a sign of distress in elephants, she said.

Read the full article here.