'Save Chevella Banyans': Police 'order' cutting of trees in Kesavaram

Hyderabad: To the already worried Chevalla banyan tree conservationists in Hyderabad, something more worrying happened on 13 September, Tuesday.

While Asiya Khan, a green activist from the city was traveling in the Chevalla stretch on Tuesday morning, she noticed a man cutting a banyan tree. She spotted it near the Kesavaram village in Chevalla Mandal of Rangareddy district.

When Asiya enquired, she realized that it was a larger programme by the police to cut down the banyans whose branches were broken. Police had reportedly asked the laborers in the neighboring areas to uproot the trees. The man cutting the tree said the Chevalla police had asked him and others to uproot the trees whose branches were falling as they were creating a roadblock.

"You trim the branches and leave. And then when there is heavy wind or rain, they fall onto the roads," said Asiya. Later, in the day, another green activist from the city filed a case against this illegal cutting of the banyans at the Chevalla Police Station.

Asiya also reminded that the case that she and other green activists in the city filed earlier is pending in the National Green Tribunal, Chennai, and is due for hearing on 14 September.

The over 100-year-old Chevalla Banyans on the Hyderabad- Vikarabad route facing the threat of extinction after plans of expanding the National Highway into a four-lane highway came up in 2018. Recently, the tree lovers in the city had geo-tagged over 900 banyans on this route.