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It began as a routine Income Tax raid in 2011. When officials entered Malayalam superstar Mohanlal’s home in Kochi’s Thevara neighbourhood, they expected financial documents, perhaps some unaccounted cash. Instead, what they found were four gleaming elephant tusks and 13 intricately carved ivory artefacts displayed like heirlooms.
The officers seized them immediately under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, which strictly prohibits possession of ivory without government certification. The recovery made headlines across Kerala, a state that reveres its elephants as temple deities and cultural symbols. Yet, over time, the case slipped into silence, overtaken by the actor’s continuing fame and the bureaucracy’s quiet accommodations.
Fourteen years later, on 25 October 2025, the Kerala High Court finally brought the issue back into sharp focus. A Division Bench declared that the ownership certificates and government orders that had legalised Mohanlal’s possession of ivory were “illegal, void and unenforceable.” With that judgment, the court punctured the illusion that procedural leniency could paper over the law.
The decision did not merely expose a celebrity’s brush with wildlife law; it laid bare a deeper crisis — the selective enforcement of conservation statutes, the erosion of procedural integrity, and the moral confusion of a society that worships elephants but tolerates ivory.
The 2011 seizure set off what initially appeared to be a straightforward prosecution. The Forest Department registered a case in the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court, Perumbavoor, charging Mohanlal under the Wild Life (Protection) Act.
The actor’s explanation was simple: the tusks came from a captive elephant that had died of natural causes, and he had merely preserved them as memorabilia. He claimed he was unaware that possession without prior declaration violated the law.
For a few years, the case remained in procedural limbo. Then, in 2015, the Kerala government issued a notification under Section 40(4) of the Act, inviting declarations from individuals possessing ivory or other animal articles, with the promise of ownership certificates under Section 42.
This legal window effectively allowed those already in possession of ivory to “regularise” it retroactively. Mohanlal submitted his declaration. The Chief Wildlife Warden verified the claim and granted him an ownership certificate for two pairs of tusks and thirteen artefacts.
The certificate changed everything. The ivory was no longer contraband; it was now “lawfully owned property.” The State then moved to withdraw the criminal prosecution. What had begun as an offence had quietly transformed into a matter of paperwork.
The government’s generosity did not go unchallenged. A group of retired forest officers, conservationists, and former wildlife wardens, including James Mathew and A A Paulose, petitioned the High Court. They argued that the State’s notifications and ownership certificates were procedurally defective and legally void.
Their contention rested on a seemingly minor but crucial point: the notification enabling declarations had never been published in the official gazette. Under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, such publication is mandatory. Without it, the notification has no legal effect.
This wasn’t merely a technicality. Gazette publication ensures transparency and public notice, essential safeguards against arbitrary state action. By bypassing this step, the government had undermined its own authority.
The petitioners alleged that this “regularisation” drive was tailored to benefit the actor. They pointed out that no similar leniency was extended to others caught with banned wildlife products. The episode, they argued, illustrated the two-tiered enforcement of environmental law — one for the powerful, another for the powerless.
In a meticulously reasoned order, the Division Bench of Justices A K Jayasankaran Nambiar and Jobin Sebastian declared the entire exercise void ab initio — invalid from inception.
“The notifications and the consequent ownership certificates were issued without adherence to the statutory requirement of publication in the official gazette,” the court observed. “A power not exercised in the manner prescribed under the statute cannot be said to have been exercised at all.”
The bench also rebuked the State government for “legal mala fides,” suggesting that its actions appeared to be guided by convenience rather than legality.
However, the court stopped short of ordering confiscation of the ivory or directing prosecution. Instead, it gave the State the option to issue a fresh, lawful notification if it wished to reopen the regularisation process.
That delicate balance — between strict legality and administrative discretion — reflects both the court’s restraint and the complexity of India’s wildlife governance system.
The High Court’s decision revived an old question in India’s justice system: Does celebrity bend the law?
For forest officials who pursued the case, the answer is obvious. “If this were any ordinary citizen, the ivory would have been seized permanently and the person fined or imprisoned,” says a retired wildlife officer familiar with the investigation. “The entire administrative machinery worked overtime to sanitise this one case. It was embarrassing to see the government fighting harder for an actor than for elephants.”
The irony, he adds, is painful. “We lecture villagers for picking up a peacock feather, yet we legalised a movie star’s tusks.”
The episode echoes a larger pattern in India’s environmental enforcement. From illegal sand mining to forest encroachments, regulatory authorities often hesitate when violations are linked to wealth or influence.
The case raises profound ethical questions that extend beyond the courtroom. Ivory is not just an object; it is a symbol of extinction. Its possession, however ornamental, perpetuates the culture of trophy display that drove elephants to slaughter for centuries.
Even if the ivory in Mohanlal’s home came from a captive elephant, the moral discomfort remains. “You cannot separate the artefact from the act,” says a conservation biologist at the Kerala Forest Research Institute. “Displaying ivory normalises a trade that decimated elephant populations. It sends the wrong signal, especially coming from someone admired by millions.”
Kerala’s relationship with elephants is deeply emotional. The animal is part of temple processions, myths, and cinema. But that same reverence has not translated into compassion for its survival. The state has one of India’s highest rates of human-elephant conflict and captive elephant abuse. The ivory controversy, therefore, exposes a contradiction: Kerala worships elephants yet tolerates their commodification.
The Wild Life (Protection) Act was enacted in 1972 to close loopholes that had allowed trophy hunters and traders to exploit wildlife. Over the decades, amendments strengthened its provisions, banning ivory trade, mandating public inventories, and criminalising even possession without certification.
But the Mohanlal case illustrates how those safeguards can be diluted through administrative shortcuts. Instead of enforcing the law through prosecution, the State opted for regularisation — a process that bypassed transparency, ignored public notice, and blurred the line between compliance and privilege.
“This is how many environmental laws collapse,” says a legal scholar specialising in conservation governance. “Not through blatant violations, but through bureaucratic flexibility exercised in favour of the influential.”
The High Court’s judgment, she says, restores the primacy of procedure. “It reminds us that due process is not a technicality; it is the only defence against arbitrariness.”
The ruling leaves the Kerala government on a difficult footing. If it issues a new notification to validate ivory declarations, it risks public backlash and further litigation. If it does nothing, it may have to resume prosecution against a national icon.
Officials in the Forest Department privately admit they are caught between law and politics. “No one wants to touch this file,” says a senior officer. “Whatever we do, one side will accuse us of bias. It would have been better if the law had been allowed to take its course in 2011.”
The government’s silence so far reflects a larger unease about confronting celebrity privilege in a state where cinema and politics often intertwine.