Mumbai: 100 acres at Sai Bangoda near Vihar Lake cleared of encroachments
Forest officers say they also found in the area an underground tank used for an illegal distillery.
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Forest officers said they had also found in the area an underground tank used for an illegal distillery. (File/Representative Image)A team of the Maharashtra forest department, aided by the reserve police as well as the Mumbai police, has demolished the illegal structures on 100 acres of forest land at Sai Bangoda near Vihar Lake, officials said.
“We removed all encroachments from the Sai Bangoda plot. We removed huts, fencing and have also made trenches so that encroachers do not enter again,’’ G Mallikarjun, director of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, within which the lake is located, told The Indian Express.
Forest officers said they had also found in the area an underground tank used for an illegal distillery. The area was encroached on during the pandemic and a lot of forest land was diverted for farming. This created impediments for the movement of wild animals such as leopards.
On May 7, 1997, the Bombay High Court passed an order for removing all encroachments from the land. The principal chief conservator of forests (wildlife), Sunil Limaye, asked the national park authorities to act after The Indian Express wrote about the Sai Bangoda encroachment on May 7.
Environmentalist D Stalin of the NGO Vanshakti said, “The illegal activities began during the first lockdown and had continued to increase over the past two years. Deforestation, logging, using the wood for illicit liquor brewing, burning down of huge trees, clearing the vegetation, illegal tapping of Mumbai’s water pipelines. All illegal activities were going on in broad daylight. The national park is being overrun by slums. It took the department two years to react but we are thankful they did their duty. The forest department must ensure that they keep the area free from encroachments and restore the forests.’’
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