Plants buried to level ground in Aravallis near GCR: Forest dept
Gurugram: The forest department has filed a forest offence report (FOR) against two persons for their alleged illegal involvement in dumping trucks of earth with malafide intention to bury hundreds of grown plants to convert the nature of land from forest to non-forest at Haiderpur Viran, behind Sector 54, in the Aravallis, officials said.
Haiderpur Viran is a prime location in the Aravalli forest connected with Golf Course Road and Gurugram-Faridabad Road. The incident has once again exposed how such non-forest activities are going on in the protected forest areas of the Aravalli in Gurugram, Faridabad and adjoining areas.
After registering the FOR on Wednesday based on a complaint from an environmentalist, the forest department is likely to file a charge sheet in the environment court at Faridabad next week that will be followed by trial.
“This is the procedure in such activities. We first register complaint against persons found involved in destroying trees, illegal constructions, etc in forest area and then we file charge sheet in the environment court of Gurugram division located at Faridabad,” said Jai Kumar, divisional forest officer (DFO), Gurugram.
The department has taken an action in the matter three months after the incident. The officials did not share why they waited to file a complaint.
“After I joined two weeks ago, I received a mail in this regard. I visited the site, scanned Google images of the area that apparently showed fully green in October 2019. My team clicked pictures of the site and we compared the two images and calculated nearly 300 grown plants, five feet to 10 feet high, were buried under the fresh earth and later levelled. Since, a group of activists raised the issue repeatedly, the suspects planted few fresh saplings in their attempt to hide facts. But complaints have been registered under Section 4 & 5 of PLPA Act and department will move the environment court in Faridabad. We will fight against land grabbers who were involved in such criminal activities,” said a forest official, wishing anonymity.
Environment experts said the incident has exposed poor forest vigilance system on part of the department, promoting land grabbers.
“Illegal encroachments of land, felling of trees, burying hundreds of trees under heavy vehicles, levelling of Paharis, filling up of gorges/gulches to create additional parking space and for construction purpose, illegal electricity connection and street lights/lamp posts inside the jungle, etc are underway,” said Vaishali Chandra Rana, the complainant, adding that hundreds of fully grown trees were felled by encroachers in forest area of Faridabad recently and in all cases the department is informed by activists like us.
