Famed Khajaguda rock precinct has turned into eerie landscape as centuries-old formations are being illegally torn down

A large portion of the Khajaguda heritage rock precinct has been reduced to open ground. Massive dumpers move through the day and night, making quite a racket. Where there used to be rock formations leading to the top, now lies a wide road that is perpetually covered with the haze of fine dust as the vehicles move on a continuous basis.

“When I used to bring my sheep for grazing here, this used to be a small path with grass growing on the hill between the rocks. Now, this is a plain ground and the hill appears as if it has moved away. Now, I take my sheep to the lake bed for grazing,” says Yadaiah, a shepherd.

Known as Faqruddin Baba Gutta or Meher Baba’s Cave, the massive rock formation, which is a geological landmark in the evolution of earth, has become one of the prime localities in the city with the Outer Ring Road (ORR) passing through one side and the Old Bombay Highway through the other. Over the past few years, plush schools, apartment blocks and restaurants have opened up in the areas.

Stripped of grassland

“I have been coming here for the past eight years. It is not just the rock formation that has changed, the grassland habitat has been affected by the changes too. There used to four seasons for wildflower blooms; now, only small patches of grasslands are left,” says Arun Vasireddy, a biologist.

“Even the hydrology of the area has changed due to the destruction of the hillock. The water cascading down this hill would reach the Nanakramguda lake. But now the water flows in multiple directions, flooding different areas at different times,” adds Mr. Vasireddy.

How the significant change has been wrought is shared by a resident of the area. “Every night, at 3 a.m., we keep hearing muffled boom-boom sounds. The sound erupts four or five times, and then it becomes quiet. But the dust remains in the air through the day and night,” says Manish, a resident of Khajaguda, who runs an ice-cream parlour on the main road.

Illegal quarrying

The ‘boom-boom’ has transformed the once scenic area for picnics into an eerie landscape. The earth has been disembowelled to create a valley where multi-axle earth-movers move massive rocks and debris. “The blasting and quarrying are done illegally as these people engage private parties who have mobile magazine licences for using explosives,” says an official of Mines and Geology Department, Telangana.

On the service road to ORR leading to Gachibowli, traffic police have a thankless job. “Every day, we issue dozens of challans to these heavy-duty vehicles. We seize them. But they are back on the road. Standing here with these masks is very difficult,” says Muhammad Wahiuddin, a police official at the location. The ORR service road is one of the central pathways through which the dumpers travel to outlying areas to dump the rocks and debris.

Pragmatic approach

“We cannot stop development. The society needs resources to develop infrastructure. We have to be pragmatic and identify rock formations that can be used as raw material and also hills that need to be protected as they are part of important geological history,” says Pranay Lal, who has written a book on India’s geological history.

Earlier, the Khajaguda rock formation was a listed site under Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority giving it some protection. But the 2017 Telangana Heritage Act does not register this rock formation. The result has been the deletion of a chapter in the earth’s geological history.