Gandhi peace symbol made into diesel

A pet elephant that once belonged to Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi and was given as a symbol of peace and friendship to the people of former Yugoslavia has been turned into diesel.

The 42-year-old Indian tusker - called Sony - died two months ago of heart failure and the plan to turn the enormous corpse into bio diesel was agreed on after a special park task force was set up to work out how best to work out what to do with the body of the prized symbol of peace and friendship.

A spokesman said: "We wanted to make sure that we treated the remains with respect, the ivory would have been worth about £200,000 on the open market and we could hardly sell those off. Instead we decided to cut off the tusks - one of which was broken at the tip - on display at the Briujini National Park, Croatia, where he lived his life in a special enclosure. But we will make sure we beef up security - we wouldn't want them stolen."

But the massive tusker's body was not treated with such respect, and shipped to a bio diesel processing plant where the body of the peace symbol was turned into diesel fuel.