[3][4][5][6][7] The Mahul-Trombay belt, which includes the villages of Mahul, Ambapada and Chereshwar were sparsely populated regions, home to only a few local fishing communities and thick mangrove forests.

In 1947, the Committee on Industrial Development came to the conclusion that "Trombay [is] ... most suitable ... [because of its] proximity to the deep water jetty and [being] far removed from residential populations".

This thinking guided the government's actions during the first Five Year Plan after independence, when the state owned refineries now present in the region were first established.

[8] Over the next few decades, Mahul became home to major industrial establishments such as Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (HPCL), Tata Power, Rashtriya Chemical Fertilizers (RCF), Sea Lord Containers, Aegis Logistics, Indian Oil, Natural Oil Blending Ltd., Chemical Terminal Trombay Ltd. and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).

Other threats noted included mangrove deforestation and land-filling (reclamation) made by amending Coastal Regulation Zone rules.

[10] Every winter (particularly November - January) the mudflats around the creek are visited by thousands of flamingos which migrate from the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, 600 kilometres away.

The 'Flamingo safari' draws ornithologists, bird watchers as well as general tourists from across the country, generating significant revenue for the Maharashtra State Mangrove Cell.

Experts attribute the increasing numbers to the large amount of organic sewage which flows in the creek, resulting in the growth of macro-benthic fauna (micro-organisms which grow in the mud) leading to an abundance of blue-green algae the flamingos can feed on.

Suryakant Vaity, president of Vanevaale Machchi Mandal, said that the fish they catch now are stinky and during low tide, they see layers of oil over the water.

[18][19][20] In is first inception report submitted in 2018, IIT noted that the colony is too close to the Coastal Regulation Zone's demarcated High Tide Line and warns that even the "slightest change in any geomorphological event such as land subsidence or sea level rise, the high tide line can shift landwards and cover the entire built up area in this zone thereby endangering the human inhabitation".

The National Building Code of India defines the maximum permissible density for low-income housing schemes as 500 tenements per hectare.

30,000) residents, for which it has come to be referred to variously as Mumbai's "hellhole", "toxic hell", "gas chamber" and "human dumping ground", where the poor "are sent to die".

[3][4][5][6][7][23] The township was developed originally for rehabilitating hutment dwellers displaced due to the implementation of the Brihanmumbai Storm Water Disposal System (BRIMSTOWAD).

[citation needed] BPCL filed a special leave petition against the state in January 2008 to stop the constructions of the SRA building citing reasons of security concerns.

MHADA president Uday Samant, Mayor Vishwanath Mahadeshwar and Shiv Sena MLA Mangesh Kudalkar visited Azad Maidan[31] and spoke to the residents.

The bench reiterated its 8 August 2018 pronouncement when IIT Bombay submitted its final report on the living conditions of Mahul residents on 8 March 2019.

The report had argued that the "overall quality of life" of the residents was "severely affected and extremely poor" and that to prevent further harm to the lives and livelihoods of the people, there was "no option other than to shift the entire population to safer places".

[34] In response, the government claimed in an affidavit before the High Court that it did not have the houses to accommodate the residents but could pay a rent of Rs 843 per household per month.

It also restricted the government from sending anymore PAPs or slum dwellers to be shifted to Mahul owing to the continued high levels of pollution and deplorable living conditions.

[49][50] On 3 April 2020, a joint statement was issued and submitted to the government by doctors, lawyers, residents and activists explaining the perils of doing so given the toxic water and air quality along with the poor ventilation system of the buildings.

In early May, the BMC shifted suspected and high risk residents of M-East Ward to Videocon Colony, near the MMRDA buildings, for quarantine.