One person was killed and several others were injured after gunfire inside Sanjay Gandhi National Park in the early hours of Tuesday, Maharashtra police and forest officials said, in an attack that unfolded far from tourist trails in the park’s Yeoor range bordering Thane.
The incident was reported from the Chena beat, a wooded section where the national park overlaps Mumbai and Thane districts. Responding teams from the forest department and Kashigaon police station reached the area after an alert in the pre-dawn hours and traced bloodstains roughly 450 metres inside the forest from the nearest boundary, according to officers briefed on the initial search.
What investigators know so far
Police have not publicly named the deceased or the injured, and have not described the weapon or number of assailants. The victim is believed to be a resident of Belkari Pada, a settlement within the Mira-Bhayandar Municipal Corporation jurisdiction that sits close to the forest edge, officials told reporters citing preliminary interviews with local residents.
No arrests had been announced by Tuesday evening. Joint teams from the Thane forest division and local crime branch were combing the beat for ballistic evidence, footwear impressions and CCTV from approach roads. Because the scene lies inside protected forest, investigators must coordinate chain-of-custody rules for any recovered shells with both police and forest statutes.
Why violence inside SGNP rattles two cities
Sanjay Gandhi National Park is marketed to millions of Mumbaikars as a weekend escape — lion safaris, Buddhist caves and morning jogs along partially fenced paths. The Yeoor side, however, has long been a friction point between adivasi and urbanising communities, informal settlements and conservation rules that limit construction and night movement.
Gun crime inside the park is rare compared with street violence in the wider Mumbai metropolitan region, which makes Tuesday’s shooting politically sensitive for both the Maharashtra home department and the environment ministry that oversees forest guards who are not routinely armed for lethal engagements. Any suggestion that disputes over land, logging or local power spilled into automatic fire will draw scrutiny from human-rights groups as well as law enforcement.
Agencies on the file
Kashigaon police registered the case and leads the criminal investigation, while forest officials document ecological damage and unauthorised entry routes assailants may have used to avoid checkpoints. Senior officers from Thane range have not ruled out transferring the probe to a crime branch unit if the attack is linked to organised groups rather than a spontaneous quarrel.
Hospital authorities have not released a casualty list, and police have asked residents near Belkari Pada to report anything unusual from Monday night onward. Tourist access to wider Yeoor trails was not officially closed, but forest guides said informal treks were paused voluntarily while teams worked the Chena beat.
What families are waiting to learn
Without a stated motive, communities along the forest fringe are left guessing whether the shooting was personal, related to illicit activities in remote beats, or connected to wider criminal rivalries that usually play out on city streets. Until ballistics and witness statements align, officials are avoiding terms like “encounter” or “gang war,” mindful of past controversies when forest areas were used to settle scores away from cameras.
For now, the confirmed facts are narrow: gunfire before dawn, one body, injured companions, and a crime scene deep enough inside the tree line that responders needed time just to locate physical evidence. The next updates will hinge on whether survivors cooperate and whether patrols can show the public that the park’s interior is still governed, not lawless.