After Noor Jehan’s death, Sri Lanka’s mission says it did not offer elephants to Pakistan.

The Sri Lankan High Commission in Pakistan rejected on Wednesday that the island nation had offered to give elephants to the South Asian country. On Sunday, one of Pakistan’s African elephants died in a zoo in the port city of Karachi. The elephant had been very sick for a long time.

In reaction to a post by architect Amir Nazir Chaudhary, the mission said, “The Sri Lankan government or the Sri Lankan High Commission have never talked about or taken any steps to give Sri Lankan elephants to Pakistan.”

But the mission said that there was “some truth” to the story because Yasin Joyia, Sri Lanka’s honorary consul in Lahore, had “mentioned the possibility of providing elephants.” But it was made clear that the person wasn’t allowed to make “undertakings or discussions,” and that person had been strongly told not to make any more statements about the problem.

“The Sri Lanka High Commission wants to categorically deny that any such talks or plans were made to give elephants to zoos in Karachi and Lahore,” the high commission said.

Sunday, after the sad death of the African elephant Noor Jehan in the Karachi Zoo, Joyia told Geo News that Sri Lanka would give two elephants to Pakistan.

Joyia said that a letter asking for the elephants was sent to the Sri Lankan high commissioner. He said that Sri Lanka would send two female elephants to the Karachi and Lahore zoos in Pakistan.

Animal rights campaigners have been very upset about keeping animals in cages in the zoo ever since Noor Jehan’s story came out about how she was not cared for at the Karachi Zoo while her health was getting worse.

People on the Internet were very upset about her painful death. They said that the zookeepers were guilty of “criminal negligence” and cruelly didn’t care about animal rights.

Animal rights activists in Pakistan and around the world posted about Noor Jehan’s sad situation on social media, which led to calls for the zoo to be closed.