Borivli mangroves: Encroachers stop officials from survey……Tanumoy Bose
Despite orders from the district tehsildars office to survey encroachments on mangroves in Yogi Nagar, Borivli, encroachers did not allow officials to enter the area on Tuesday Nitin Vichare, who claims to be a legal tenet on the land, made the survey officials and members of New Link Road Residents Forum (NLRRF) wait for hours.
Only after the naik tehsildar of the area SN Shinde arrived, Vichare and his people allowed them to conduct the survey.
Residents claim that the mangrove patch has been destroyed to make way for industrial sites.
The Hindustan Times had first reported this on December 20. After this, Shinde ordered the survey officials to prepare a panchnama of the area. Shinde has asked his officials to include the illegal huts, industries, fabrication units and paver block units in the panchnama.
All the establishments are located in a 10-ft dump amid the mangroves. The patch has been filled with debris of construction material, garbage and soil. The debris has flown from the garbage compactor vehicles, said Vichare.
Owner of the illegal establishments threatened members of the forum in front of seven police constables of the MHB colony police station. We were called there by the tehsildar office for the survey because of our complaint about the irregularities on the Costal Regulatory Zone land, said Harish Pandey, member of NLRRF. Pandey further added during a survey on May 3 with the sub divisional officer, the forum members were threatened with death. The FIR of the incident had been lodged at the MHB colony police station.
I have no idea about the event, said Bharat Kumbhar, acting senior police inspector, MHB colony. On December 31 forum members had written letters to the chief minister and the commissioner of police Mumbai to ensure security of the forum members.