Jewish trust moves HC over land in Panvel cemetery classified as ‘residential’

The Jewish Heritage Trust has urged the court to set aside the allegedly illegal classification of Plot No. 210 in Panvel’s D-Ward

Mumbai: Six months after the Bombay High Court directed the Panvel Municipal Corporation (PMC) to remove encroachments from a 200-year-old Jewish burial ground in Panvel, the Jewish Heritage Trust (JHT) is back before the court, contending that its June 2025 order had not been effectively complied with. The trust has now alleged that a plot of land that was part of the burial ground has been classified as a “residential zone” by the civic body.

The Jewish Heritage Trust has urged the court to set aside the allegedly illegal classification of Plot No. 210 in Panvel’s D-Ward.

In its petition, filed through chief trustee Raymond Gadkar, the JHT has urged the court to set aside the allegedly illegal classification of Plot No. 210 in Panvel’s D-Ward.

Appearing for the JHT on Monday, advocate Gauraj Shah told the court that an unauthorised structure had come up on the plot “under the garb of a dargah”. JHT’s petition says that the Jewish community has used the land as a burial ground since the 19th century, and urged the court to direct the PMC to maintain and protect the historical graves.

In a public interest litigation filed by the JHT in 2023, the high court had, in June last year, ordered the PMC to remove unauthorised structures from the site. In its fresh petition, the trust said the dargah/tomb on the land is “indisputably unauthorised, as even PMC records that no construction permission was granted”. It added that the PMC’s failure to remove such illegal structures despite court orders amounted to “willful dereliction of statutory duties”.

According to the JHT, the burial ground is the sole designated cemetery available to the Jewish community in the wider vicinity of Panvel, Khopoli, Navi Mumbai, and Karjat. The trust stated that following the high court’s order in June 2025, the concerned PMC officers carried out a site inspection and prepared a report dated July 8, 2025 in which the PMC itself recorded that Plot No. 210 contains Jewish graves.

The JHT argued that the PMC’s inquiry into the matter “was unduly narrow and perfunctory” because it relied on the documents produced by the alleged encroachers with “no independent application of mind”.

The trust further said that information obtained under the Right to Information Act revealed that a letter dated September 11, 2025, from the assistant director of the town planning department to the PMC’s deputy commissioner (unauthorised construction), stated that as per the original town planning scheme, Plot No. 210 was shown as a “residential zone”. This classification was completely inconsistent with the City Survey Map, it added.