The Uttarakhand High Court on Wednesday issued notices to the CBI, the Union government and the state government for lack of action in the case regarding the reported disappearance of 7,375 forest boundary pillars in the Mussoorie Forest Division and the alleged amassing of disproportionate assets by territorial forest officers.
The division bench of justices Manoj Kumar Tiwari and Subhash Upadhyay issued the notices after hearing a petition regarding the same.
Advocate Gaurav Kumar Bansal, who appeared for petitioner Naresh Chaudhary, said the disaster was not accidental, but the result of a nexus between forest officials, land mafia and politicians. The systematic obliteration of these crucial demarcation markers, he said, had opened the floodgates for rampant encroachment, illegal construction, and ecological plunder in one of India’s most fragile and critical forest ecosystems.
“The petition contends that this disaster is not accidental but the result of a deeply entrenched and malevolent nexus between complicit forest officials, powerful political interests, and land mafias,” he said.
The petition also highlights that this plundering has led to irreversible forest cover loss, increased landslide risks, and was a contributing factor to the floods and connectivity disruptions.
Highlighting internal reports of the state forest department officially confirming that 7,375 boundary pillars are missing from the ground, with the majority vanishing from the commercially lucrative Mussoorie and Raipur ranges, Bansal said the state authorities had taken no credible action despite the damning findings and recommendations for a high-level probe by the forest department’s Working Plan wing.
Also Read: The curious case of missing forest boundary pillars in Mussoorie
“Instead, they attempted to initiate a superficial re-investigation by a junior officer, which the petitioner argued was a blatant attempt to shield the powerful culprits involved,” he said.
Taking serious note of the large-scale corruption, collusion, and the monumental threat to a region of national ecological importance, the state HC has issued formal notices to CBI for a potential investigation into the criminal conspiracy behind the disappearance of the pillars and the alleged illicit enrichment of forest custodians, Union ministry of environment, forest and climate change, as the central authority responsible for forest conservation under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, and Uttarakhand forest department, the principal authority accused of gross failure in protecting and demarcating its forest boundaries, Bansal further informed.
In a communication dated August 22, 2025, the then chief conservator of forests (working plan) Sanjiv Chaturvedi had expressed grave concerns about missing boundary pillars in the division. Chaturvedi had sent the letter to Neelima Shah, assistant inspector general of forests (central) MOEF Dehradun, in which he had noted that such activities amounted to a breach of the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, and called for urgent corrective measures and investigation.
He was transferred on August 25 and posted as director of Forest Training Academy.
On August 28, the Union environment ministry directed the state forest department to conduct a prompt investigation and submit a report in the matter of the missing forest boundary pillars.
Earlier too, Chaturvedi had written two letters – on June 21 and August 20 – to Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (HoFF), Uttarakhand, stating that 7,375 forest boundary pillars in the Mussoorie Forest Division are missing, which was “extremely unusual”.
These amount to nearly 60 per cent of the total boundary pillars in the division, especially in Raipur and Mussoorie range, he had stated, and called for an investigation by a special investigation team or CBI or an investigation under judicial supervision since the incident had significantly tarnished the image of the department.
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