A former broadcast journalist in Bermuda has swapped sides of the camera in a fight to end the abuse of temple elephants in India.Sangita Iyer, the environmental correspondent at ZBM for three years, said she planned to use renewed interest in animal welfare to campaign for better treatment of the giant animals.Ms Iyer, who grew up in the Indian state of Kerala and now lives in Toronto, Canada, said that she was inspired to create a film on the horrific treatment of elephants, Gods in Shackles, after a trip to her homeland.She added she visited Kerala for the first anniversary of the death of her father and went to a temple to see the elephants.Ms Iyer said that she was “utterly devastated” at how they were treated.She added: “I could see the suffering of these elephants — tears flowing down their faces, unbearable heat.“The shackles are so heavy and they are so deeply, tightly tethered to their ankles that they were cutting right to their flesh.“Their legs were bleeding profusely, there were tumours on their hips.“It was just unbelievable.”Ms Iyer said that she filmed about 25 hours of footage and later came back with a documentary crew.She added: “We gathered 200 hours of footage and I got to know the elephants on such a deep level.“It was profoundly moving for me to witness this — I thought ‘I’ve got to do something’.”Ms Iyer added that the only way the mistreatment of elephants would end was through an “unbelievable amount of awareness and enlightenment”.Ms Iyer said: “It’s probably not going to happen in my lifetime, but the only way to do this in a democratic way is by educating and creating awareness.”Ms Iyer was speaking after she was featured in an article on the BBC’s website, which spotlighted Gods in Shackles.The documentary, released in June 2016, featured the abuse of temple elephants, which are used in religious rituals in India.Ms Iyer said that the article, published on Monday, had been translated into eight languages, including Tamal and Arabic.She added: “It just blew me away, especially because exploitation is rampant in most of the Asian countries.”Elephants are venerated in Hindu and Buddhist culture, and have been kept at temples across India for centuries.The temple elephants are featured in Hindu ceremonies and festivals, and the animals, which live in large social groups in the wild, are often kept alone or split into male and female groups.Gods in Shackles has won ten awards, including Best Feature Documentary at the Cayman Island Film Festival, and was nominated for recognition at the United Nations General Assembly by the prestigious International Elephant Film Festival.Ms Iyer said the BBC article about her documentary could reflect a fresh interest in elephant conservation efforts.She added that the public were becoming more aware of elephant abuse, such as an incident where 50 elephants had been “massacred” in India between May and August by farmers protecting their crops.Ms Iyer said: “Elephants come in contact with human beings constantly and obviously there’s human-elephant conflict.“Elephants are stronger and a lot more powerful, and they end up killing humans. Then there are retaliatory killings.”She added: “The reality is that elephants don’t have enough habitats.“The ecosystems are dwindling rapidly in India because the human population is surging at an unprecedented rate — 1.38 billion people are living in an area that is three times smaller than the United States.”Ms Iyer said that the mistreatment of elephants, a protected species, highlighted the hypocrisy of their status as religious and cultural icons in India.In 2008, Ms Iyer cofounded the Bermuda Environmental Alliance, a non-profit organisation dedicated to tackling environmental problems. The charity was wound up in 2014.She was the host, executive director and producer of the Bermuda Environmental Alliance’s six-part series, Bermuda — Nature’s Jewel,/i>, which won the 2012 Bermuda National Trust award for environmental work.The series is still used in Bermuda’s schools.