Mumbai: 5,200 sqm of mangroves on Sahara land burnt to ashes

Around 5,200 sqm of mangrove forest near Lokhandwala in Andheri (W) was reduced to ashes on Sunday – thanks to some unidentified culprits, who brazenly chopped down and burned the green area to clear the space. The huge mangrove swamp was on a private plot owned by the Sahara Group and did not directly come under the jurisdiction of Mangrove Cell of the Forest Department.

The fire started in the evening at the garbage dump next to Millat Nagar in Lokhandwala area. It has now been doused by the fire department," said senior police inspector of Oshiwara station, Subhash Khanvilkar.

"After coming to know about the massive fire in a garbage dump, I personally went to check the ground reality and found that what the police were claiming to be a dump was actually a huge mangrove forest. Now it is burnt to ashes," said Kunickaa Sadanand, a resident of Lokhandwala.

According to Kunickaa, the fire that spread over a massive 5,200 sqm of forest land started way inside or away from the road, and seemed like a deliberate attempt to clear the mangroves. "The fire was on a plot owned by the Sahara Group. We do not know at the moment if it was deliberate or not," said N Vasudevan, chief conservator of forest, Mangrove Cell.

When asked about the applicable rules or if the patch came under the "Protected Forest" or "Reserved Forest" tag, Vasudevan replied, "The Environment Protection Act, and not the Forest Protection Act, will be applicable, as mangrove was on a private land and we do not have direct jurisdiction over it."

Still, a team from Mangrove Cell will visit the location on Monday to take a stock of the situation before making a report.

In the past, residents and environmental activists have successfully fought off attempts to destroy mangroves on the same area of land. A public interest litigation (PIL), too, was filed in the Supreme Court, that led to halting of plans to have a golf course, club houses and residential buildings on the plot.