such executions were often held in public as a warning to any who may transgress. to that end, many of the elephants were especially large, often weighing in excess of nine tons. the executions were intended to be gruesome and often were. they were sometimes preceded by torture publicly inflicted by the same elephant used for the execution. an account of one such torture-and-execution at baroda in 1814 has been preserved in "the percy anecdotes":