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Sonegaon Amrai Nagpur: A 300-Year-Old Grove Under Scrutiny

Sonegaon Amrai in Nagpur showing the historic grove and Bhonsle-era well at the centre of the 61-tree controversy
Sonegaon Amrai in Nagpur, home to a historic grove and a Bhonsle-era well, has become the focus of the debate over 61 marked trees

Sonegaon Amrai has become one of Nagpur’s most closely watched local disputes this summer. The immediate trigger has been a plan to lay a sewer line through the grove, with campaigners saying 61 marked trees could be cut. The dispute has not arisen on empty ground. This patch near Sonegaon Lake and the terminal belt carries a Bhonsle-era well, older temple markers, traces of a wider water system and a long record of dumping, drinking and neglect. In Vidarbha, very few urban sites bring so much history and so much present-day pressure into one narrow stretch of green.


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What has pushed Sonegaon Amrai back into public talk is the clash between memory and paperwork. Residents have for years treated it as a place with heritage value. Recent reporting has shown the civic body treating the same patch as a corridor for utility work, even while the old well inside it was being cleaned and discussed as a historical structure. That contrast has given the latest row a sharper edge than a routine tree-cutting notice.



The old grove and what remains


Sonegaon Amrai is not just a convenient label for the wooded stretch off the old terminal road. Local reporting places it inside an older Bhonsle-era zone around Sonegaon Lake.


A report from January 2025 said the belt runs from the Sahakar Nagar cremation ground to the Nagpur Flying Club and that it was known as an amrai because of its large mango trees on former Bhonsle land.

Until roughly five or six years before that report, the place remained under guarded military control. Entry was restricted for most people, and nearby residents were allowed morning access only up to a set hour. When a road was later opened through the zone, traffic, casual visits and dumping rose sharply.


That older identity has not fully disappeared. It is still written into the ground. In 2022, the INTACH Nagpur chapter used Sonegaon Aamrai for a heritage walk and listed what participants explored there, Sonegaon Lake, Murlidhar temple, Nagoba Mandir, historical plinths, pushkarnis, step wells, British-era structures and the natural heritage of Sonegaon.


An earlier heritage walk reported movement from the Murlidhar temple through the remains of a palace, a lake and a well, while also linking the temple’s design to Raghuji Bhonsle. A news article separately described Murlidhar Mandir on the bank of Sonegaon Lake as a 19th-century temple. That combination is unusual in an urban setting.


Few pockets in Vidarbha still hold a grove, a lake edge, old shrines, masonry remains, and oral memory in one continuous zone.

The well, now drawing public attention, fits this older map of the place. Reporting in May 2026 described it as a nearly 300-year-old structure believed to date to the reign of Raghuji Bhonsle I and as part of a planned water management system. Another report, much older but still useful, recorded a conservationist’s recollection that Sonegaon Lake once fed the Pohara River.


He described a British-period black stone weir and said water from the lake passed through a Bhonsle-era garden on what is now terminal land before joining the river coming from the Khamla side. Read together, those reports suggest that Sonegaon Amrai was once part of a connected system of lake, garden, well and stream rather than a leftover parcel of land.


That is what gives the place its significance. Sonegaon Amrai is not important only because it is green. It matters because the green cover still sits on top of older urban memory. The grove’s name comes from mango trees. The well points to a working water system. The temple belt and plinths show sustained use over time.


Even where the records are incomplete, the site still carries enough clues to show that this was a designed zone and not a vacant patch that simply escaped construction.



How neglect changed the Sonegaon Amrai


The strain on Sonegaon Amrai did not begin with the present sewer line row. It built up slowly and visibly.


Once the route opened out and public movement increased, residents started talking less about the old mango grove and more about litter, misuse and the loss of the place they remembered.

Reports quoted walkers saying they had seen more dead snakes in the previous five years than in the previous twenty-five, and that peacocks, which were once visible there, had stopped appearing because of vehicle noise. That is one of the clearest signs of how the site changed. What had been a controlled zone turned into a pass-through stretch with weaker oversight and heavier pressure.


By May 2024, the deterioration was already stark enough for a clean-up drive to make news. 45 volunteers found hundreds of empty liquor bottles and used condoms in the ecologically sensitive patch and collected about 15 bags of waste.


One volunteer said that the group found around 200 empty liquor bottles and that dumping had increased between drives. In February 2026, another citizen-led effort pulled 735 kilograms of rubbish from the forested stretch along Amrai Road and the Sonegaon Lake side.


In May 2026, the newly formed Save Amrai group carried out another drive near the Hanuman temple and the Bhonsle-era well, collecting nearly 10 sacks of waste. In this part of Vidarbha, the crisis at Sonegaon Amrai was not hidden behind specialist reports first. It was visible in liquor bottles, wrappers, plastic and the repeated need for volunteers to clear the same ground again.


The damage was not limited to rubbish on the ground. In October 2025, advertising hoardings and plastic banners had been nailed to trees along the Sonegaon road stretch.

Later that month, the Amraipara Road was buried under plastic waste, food wrappers, discarded bottles and construction debris. A local commuter was quoted saying it had become “unbearable to walk here.” By December 2025, the same stretch was being reported as a hotspot for open drinking, with residents saying families had started avoiding the area and that women and girls could feel unsafe when intoxicated people moved through the grove after dark.


The old setting that once drew walkers and cyclists had turned into a site of constant low-level damage.


The well itself became a symbol of how the entire patch had been allowed to slide. Reports in 2025 and 2026 described it as filled with algae, household waste, plastic and liquor bottles, with damaged masonry and safety risks around it.


In late May of 2026, cranes, pumps and JCB machines were used to remove debris and stagnant water. Yet the clean-up also exposed a deeper problem. The structure was treated by residents as a historical site, but officials found it was not on the protected heritage list.


That gap matters. It helps explain why the place could be talked about as heritage by citizens and heritage groups, and still remain vulnerable in formal records.



The row over the sewer line at Sonegaon Amrai


The latest controversy took shape in mid-May, when notices linked to a sewer line project identified trees in the Amrai patch as obstacles.


The site named in reports lies on the Airport Authority land between Sahakar Nagar Ghat and Mulik Complex. The figure most often used in the public campaign is 61 trees, though some early reports put it at 65. Reporting on the proposal listed the trees as including babul, ber, hivar, neem, eucalyptus, tamarind, banyan, jamun, palash and bel. Local reports also said that only three of the marked trees had been categorised as heritage trees, with the remaining 58 treated as non-heritage. That technical distinction quickly became one of the most contested points in the debate.

The procedural side of the dispute soon became as important as the environmental side. Residents and campaigners objected that notices had been pasted on trees before the objection process was over. Local reports said pipes and construction material had reached the spot before the hearing stage was complete.


Those same reports said more than 200 objections had been filed and that a public hearing was scheduled for 2 June 2026. The tone of the campaign changed after that. It moved from complaint and clean-up to organised resistance built around hearings, public messaging and visible street action.


On 25 May, residents formed a line of protest near the Amrai stretch and linked the protest over the Amrai trees with another green-cover dispute nearby.


The point they kept returning to was simple. Sonegaon Amrai is not a random roadside patch. One activist line carried by a local report summed up the mood, “This small green patch should be preserved as part of the city’s heritage.” Another line from the same protest said the sewer line could be laid “without cutting heritage trees.” The language was direct and practical. It did not treat the argument as abstract environmental speech. It treated it as a dispute over a specific old site with visible historical markers.


The protests grew larger by the end of the month. On 31 May, a local report said more than 500 citizens, many of them young, gathered at Amrai to protest the proposed felling. Another report described a Chipko-style action led by about 61 senior citizens, including women who tied rakhis to 61 trees and lit 61 lamps.

Their claims were emotional, but they were also rooted in a specific reading of the place. They described Sonegaon Amrai as part of childhood memory, morning routines, religious activity and natural heritage. By then, the dispute had become one of the most visible green-space rows in Vidarbha this season.


The timing has sharpened the contradiction. In the same month that residents were cleaning the grove and the civic body was clearing the Bhonsle-era well, the same patch was also being marked for excavation linked to a sewer line. One set of actions treated the site as a historical place worth restoring. The other treated it as a corridor where tree loss could be processed through notices and a hearing. That overlap explains why Sonegaon Amrai has drawn so much attention in such a short span.


Sonegaon Amrai remains in a state of transition. The debate over the marked trees brought unprecedented attention to a patch that had spent years battling neglect, dumping and encroachment on its character. At the same time, citizen groups have continued clean-up drives across the grove, while work has begun to restore the nearly 300-year-old Bhonsle-era well that had long been buried under waste and stagnant water.


Volunteers are now carrying out sustained conservation efforts inside the forested stretch and have expanded their campaign beyond tree protection to the broader preservation of the Amrai itself. The grove's future remains under close public watch, but one thing has already changed. Sonegaon Amrai is no longer an overlooked corner of Nagpur. It has become one of the city's most closely observed heritage and environmental sites.


FAQs


Q: What is the Sonegaon Amrai Nagpur history and significance?

A; Sonegaon Amrai is a Bhonsle-era grove zone near Sonegaon Lake in Nagpur, known historically for its mango trees, old temple belt, historical plinths, step wells and a nearly 300-year-old well. Heritage walks by INTACH have treated it as a cluster of natural and built markers rather than a single monument. Its significance lies in that combination of grove, water system and shrine network still visible on site.


Q: What is Sonegaon Amrai tree cutting controversy in Nagpur?

A:The current row centres on a sewer line project for which 61 trees in the Amrai patch have been marked in public notices, though some early reports put the figure at 65. Local reports said the route runs across airport authority land between Sahakar Nagar Ghat and Mulik Complex. Residents, walkers and environmental groups opposed the proposal, filed objections and held protests through late May 2026.


Q: What is the Sonegaon Amrai well, lake and temple connection?

A: The old well in Sonegaon Amrai is believed to date to the reign of Raghuji Bhonsle I and to have formed part of a larger water management system. Reporting and heritage documentation connect the site to Sonegaon Lake, the Murlidhar temple, Nagoba Mandir, step wells and other historical remains. An older account also linked the lake and the Amrai belt to the Pohara river through a British-period weir and a Bhonsle-era garden.



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Shruti
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Rated 5 out of 5 stars.

Always thoughtful

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About the Author

Pranay Arya is the founder and editor of The News Dirt, an independent journalism platform focused on ground-level reporting across Vidarbha. He has authored 800+ research-based articles covering public issues, regional history, infrastructure, governance, and socio-economic developments, building one of the region’s most extensive digital knowledge archives.

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