ISLAMABAD: Wary of the continued environmental degradation in the Margalla Hills, the Supreme Court on Friday said it will hold top police officials in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) responsible for the perpetual denuding of the hills.

An order issued by a three-judge Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali reads:“The inspector general of police as well as the senior superintendent police (SSP) of Punjab and KP should ensure the protection of the Margalla Hills or they will be made responsible for the denuding of the forest cover”.

The court’s attention was drawn towards continued quarrying and the cutting down of trees in the Margalla Hills after a discussion on the matter was aired on a television show on May 19.

In a prime time programme on a private television channel, the host had talked about quarrying in the hills by mafia as well as by cement factories.

During the show, a report was also aired in which the reporter had visited Lora in Abbotabad and had found the unabated crushing of rocks in the hills which had been going on for 35 years without any checks thus damaging the forest cover on the hills.

The reporter had interviewed a number of locals who told her that continued quarrying and blasting were putting the lives of those living in adjacent areas in danger due to falling rocks and had also caused cracks to develop in their houses.

According to the report, blasting in the hills had reduced the size of some of the mountains, with dumper trucks loaded with clinkers making 40 trips on an average day.

The unchecked business of quarrying, stone crushing and the cutting of trees has also spread into Murree, the galiyat and Azad Kashmir, the report said.

Though the illegal activities are being carried out in areas in the KP province, the supply of electricity comes from Punjab, the report had said.

When the reporter had tried to contact the owners of the crushing plants to get their comment, they had threatened her and had said she was trespassing on private land.

The illegal operations are being conducted under the nose of senior government officials and locally elected public representatives, who seem to be ignoring the issue, the report said.

Though the mountains are being destroyed by the illegal cutting of trees, the governments of the two provinces are not taking note of the issue, the apex court said.

During the proceeding a member of the bench, Justice Amir Hani Muslim, cautioned that senior police officials of the local police station will be stripped of their uniform if the court received further complaints of more crushing on the hills or of the denuding of their forest cover.

This is not the first time that the Supreme Court has expressed concern over the cutting down of trees in the Margalla Hills.

Last year, former Chief Justice Jawwad S Khawaja warned that the court will not tolerate such activities and will take strict action against the violation of its judgement of October 25, 2013.

Citing section 21 of the Islamabad Wildlife (Protection, Conservation and Management) Ordinance 1979, the referred to verdict of October 2013 had held activities such as the construction of tunnels or allowing licenses for crushing stones in the Margalla Hills as prohibited.

Unabated crushing and quarrying can potentially destroy the ecology of the area and may prove to be extremely hazardous for the environment.

Declared a national park in 1980, the area has already been disfigured, decimated and defiled by those involved in crushing rocks by destroying the rock, soil, fauna and flora of the hills.

Home to a diversity of plants, birds and animals, the Margalla Hills National Park is an area protected from all kinds of development.

Published in Dawn, June 4th, 2016