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J Dey
MUMBAI, AUGUST 8: More than 250 illegal distilleries dotting the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SNGP) are brewing liquor and trouble for the park's plant and animal life. The production and movement of liquor distilleries or bhattis into and out of the park is hampering animal behaviour in a park that has already been encroached upon by slums, say environmentalists.
Most of the bhattis are located in the core zones of Shilhonda Trail, Nagla block and the water pipeline running across Gudgaon abutting Vihar lake. Several of them also flourish along the buffer zone of forests adjoining Malad (east) and Bangorda areas near the Film city at Goregaon.
Local bootleggers residing in slums adjoining the SNGP sneak into the forests to brew country-made liquor which is supplied to settlements near the park. Some of the spurious hooch is also transported to outlets stretching from Andheri to Dahisar in the western suburbs and Bhandup to Thane in the east, revealed forest officials.
During the dry season, a fewhundred trees are cut down in the park for fuelwood for the bhattis. And when the branches get wet in the rains, the bootleggers smuggle gas cylinders inside the park to heat up the distilleries.
Gunny bags containing jaggery weighing about 25 kilograms each and nausagar, an ingredient for manufacturing country-made liquor, are also transported in tempos and autorickshaws to the fringe of the park from where they are smuggled into the core forest area by tribals, who are hired specifically for the purpose. They are paid between Rs 25 and Rs 50 for carrying the raw materials for a distance stretching up to two to four kilometres into the forests.
Already, the high levels of sound and smoke and heavy concentration of slums and industries within and outside the park's boundary has seriously disturbed animal and plant life within the park. The mushrooming of the distilleries will just hasten this process, fear environmentalists.They point out that due to the brewing business, migration routes often get cutoff and the natural growth of plants and breeding of animals is hampered. Even mating behaviour and the territorial marking of herding animals are disturbed. Already, slums and encroachments have by now cleared a forest area measuring about 799.82 hectares.
According to Debi Goenka of the Bombay Environmentalist Action Group, which had filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Bombay High Court relating to the SGNP, the high court's recommendations to provide a battalion of the State Reserve Police to provide security cover to the park is yet to be fulfilled.
Deputy Conservator of Forests A R Bharthi admitted that there are several illegal distilleries along the Nagla block area, most of which are run by local hoodlums and tribals. Some of the bhattis are functioning with the blessing of local police stations, and the lack of armed forest guards hasn't helped affairs at the park, he added.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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