Villager buys Maratha fort for ₹300, state reclaims it

While an 1872 land survey had recorded the structure as ‘Gopalgarh Fort’, a 1960 entry had falsely listed the seven-acre property as barren land

THANE: As a child, Deepak Vaidya had heard tales of an abandoned fort on a sea-facing hillock in Chiplun, in coastal Maharashtra, and went in search of this this forgotten wonder. What he saw as an eight-year-old took his breath away. Surrounded by dense jungle and with no proper road, he walked right up to the fort and was transfixed by its deep trench, crumbling turrets and a step-well that magically still held water.

In the 1960s, the property was auctioned for ₹300 to an Anjanvel resident, Yunus Hussain Maniyar, who developed the historic site into a mango farm . (Pramod Tambe/ HT Photo)

A resident of Anjanvel village, which