Elephants are revered all around India as manifestations of the Hindu god Ganesh — and nowhere more so than in the film and financial capital of Bombay.

Despite its affection for the giant beasts, Bombay has become the first Indian city to ban them from its streets after an 18-month campaign by animal rights activists.

The state government of Maharashtra, of which Bombay is the capital, ruled last week that it was an act of cruelty to force an elephant to walk through the city’s congested and polluted streets.

Local authorities have now promised to arrest any mahout, or keeper, who defies the ban and to confiscate their elephants and move the animals to a sanctuary outside the city.

“The idea is to keep the animals away from the city roads and not victimise the owners,” Shree Bhagwan, a senior official in the state forestry department, said.

“I have asked my staff to request owners to leave the city limits . . . at least the elephants will be spared the harassment of walking on tar roads amid traffic. Of course, if they aren’t co-operative, we will have to use force.”

Bombay has an estimated fourteen elephants, owned by five or six families, which use them to beg or hire them out for weddings and other religious ceremonies.

They are often seen plodding along the city’s roads, waiting outside wedding halls or parading along the seafront in ceremonial head-dresses and howdahs.

The ban is the result of a campaign led by the Bombay chapter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), which delivered a report to police and forestry officials last week.

“We all revere Ganesh, but look how the elephant is treated,” Anuradha Sawhney, chief functionary of Peta in Bombay, told The Times.

“The way they are treated is abysmal, and their living conditions are pathetic,” she said. “This ban is a step in the right direction, but we cannot stop here. We have to push for a ban in all urban areas.”

Peta’s report gave examples of elephants being killed and injured, running amok in crowded areas and being used to break laws against begging. It highlighted the case of a 30-year-old elephant called Lakshmi, which died last year after being hit by a drunk driver.

The report said that Bombay’s elephants were often kept with their legs chained together, and developed sores on their feet from walking on hot, tarmac streets. It also said that they carried diseases that were harmful to humans, including tuberculosis and anthrax.

Several Bollywood stars added their names to the report, including Sanjay Dutt, Rahul Khanna and Celina Jaitley.

They and other animal rights activists welcomed the ban, urging other state governments to take similar action.

But some criticised the government of Maharashtra for not making adequate preparations to rehabilitate the elephants, which are mostly from northeastern India.

Bombay police have already run into trouble after arresting one offending mahout and chaining his 13-year-old elephant, also called Lakshmi, outside a police station. The mahout had to be released on bail five hours later because there was no one else to look after Lakshmi.

Mr Bhagwan said that the government planned to build a rehabilitation centre in the forests of the Nashik region, about 125 miles (200km) northeast of Bombay.

Failing that, the animals will have to be sent back to the North East, he said.

There are about 3,600 tamed elephants in India, about 1,000 of which work in logging in the northeastern state of Assam, and 600 of which are used in religious ceremonies in the southern state of Kerala.

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