An elephant performs at Hazaribagh’s Ajanta Circus, from where Patta escaped on Monday. Picture by Vishvendu Jaipuriar

No more tricks, trumpeted a circus elephant decisively in Hazaribagh on Monday morning, as she broke free of her travelling troupe to create bedlam for three hours, scaring townspeople, including schoolchildren, before getting captured.

Patta, the female elephant, belongs to Ajanta Circus, which started its show last week at Gandhi Maidan, Matwari Mohalla, a locality for the well-heeled, including bureaucrats, lawyers and businessmen.

Sources said Patta — one of the three performing giant mammals who can even play cricket to entertain the crowds, the other two being Ganga and Jamuna — came out of the circus tent and entered the area’s lane No. 5 around noon. Then, she charged at Devangana Chowk, damaging the boundary wall of a house.

By then, circus authorities had noticed one elephant less. A search revealed Patta was at Devangana Chowk. A team tried to chase her back to the circus enclosure at Matwari Road via Korra Chowk.

But Patta showed she was no pushover. She refused to budge from near a marble shop and snorted derisively at those who came too close.

Seeing the angry elephant, pedestrians started running, lest she decided to chase them. Those at home went up on terraces to get a better view of the jumbo drama.

Schoolchildren on their way home suffered the worst. Quaking with fear, they alighted from vans and sought refuge in homes close by rather than cross the point where Patta stood. “An angry elephant in the middle of the road is scary,” said ninth grader Khusboo Patel of Mount Carmel School.

Three hours later, circus authorities managed to subdue Patta back to her enclosure.

“We have compensated the person whose boundary wall was damaged. This is an accident and will not recur,” circus manager S. Ghoshal said.

He, however, refused to answer why elephants — Schedule 1 animals under India’s Wildlife Protection Act, which means they face the threat of extinction due to poaching or trade — at the circus perform tricks or let acrobats hang on rings attached to their trunks.

The incident raised the hackles of wildlife experts.

Palamau Tiger Reserve DFO (buffer) A.K. Mishra said circuses were prohibited by the wildlife act from hosting such shows featuring animal stunts. “The circus owner can obtain permission to keep the animal but can’t host these shows. Violating the act can invite penalty of upto Rs 5,000 or even a five-year prison term,” he told The Telegraph.

Wildlife activist Satya Prakash added that circus owners and the masses need to be reminded that the elephant was a Schedule-I animal. “I will inquire if the circus has requisite permits in place,” he added.

One does not know what Patta went through after being captured, but residents such as Bhuvaneshwar Patel of Matwari’s lane No. 1 expressed relief. “The point where the elephant was roaming is very close to NH-100 or Giridih-Hazaribagh road, which is also the Bokaro connector. An elephant amok on the busy highway is bad news. There would have been many mishaps,” he said.