Mohammad Ahsan Wagay does not remember which day it happened. His memory is blurred by the shock. Sometime in the third week of November, a...
Mohammad Ahsan Wagay does not remember which day it happened. His memory is blurred by the shock. Sometime in the third week of November, a team of forest department officials arrived at Kani Dajan village in Central Kashmir’s Budgam district. They left behind a trial of destruction, cutting down hundreds of apple trees and damaging other crops on forest land occupied by village residents.
Wagay’s orchard was also flattened. “They axed around 200 of my apple trees,” he said. “They just came and felled our trees. They didn’t even give us a chance to uproot them on our own. When I went to my orchard, I wanted to cry.”
Three days earlier, Wagay said, the department had issued show cause notices to occupants of forest land in the village. “The notice said that we had illegally occupied forest land and asked why we should not be evicted,” said Wagay. But he had not imagined that they would chop down the trees so soon. “It will take 50 years for new trees to become like the ones they cut down,” he explained.
Residents across Budgam district estimate around 10,000 fruit-bearing trees have been chopped down by the forest department since November. “It’s heartbreaking to look at these...
