Maoists, missionaries and mullahs?: Meet the Mumbaikars arrested for protesting Aarey tree cutting

On the night of October 4, when Mumbai businessman Manoj Kumar Reddy returned home from work, he found his 11-year-old daughter in tears. The trees in Aarey Colony were being cut, she told him.

Earlier that day, the Bombay High Court had dismissed a batch of petitions challenging the Mumbai civic corporation’s decision to allow the cutting of more than 2,600 trees in Aarey Colony, a forested expanse in northern Mumbai, to make way for a controversial metro rail car shed.

The Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation – the government agency in charge of the metro – hastily began to fell trees that very night. Hundreds of citizens who have been protesting the car shed proposal since September were left distraught, including Reddy’s young daughter.

“It broke my heart to see her crying, so I told her I would go to Aarey and do my best to save the trees,” said Reddy.

That night, as Reddy joined a large crowd of protestors at Aarey, he was lathi-charged by the police, shoved into a police van and detained along with more than 100 other people. After spending a night in police detention, 29 of the protesters were arrested, sent to Thane jail and slapped with a variety of non-bailable criminal charges, including Section 353...

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