Trees felled at the Botanic Garden. A Telegraph picture

The high court on Monday set up a three-member committee to probe the felling of trees at the Indian Botanic Garden.

The team — comprising police commissioner Goutam Mohan Chakrabarti; the principal chief conservator of forest, Atanu Raha; and lawyer Anindya Mitra — has been given the liberty to “examine all relevant documents” related to the felling of the trees and visit any part of the garden.

“The committee can also take necessary photographs and make video recordings of the affected area or any other area that may be necessary for preparing the report,” the division bench of Chief Justice S.S. Nijjar and Justice S. Banerjee said.

A preliminary report has to be submitted by November 28.

The bench, acting on a petition filed by green activist Subhas Dutta, passed the order after the additional director of the Shibpur garden made a submission on the felling of the trees. He also produced some documents before the bench.

Counsel for the additional director said the garden had in 1970 decided to chop off 16 trees to set up a flower garden. The decision was implemented only recently, the lawyer said.

But the bench observed that the documents produced by the additional director did not “indicate anywhere how the decision to cut healthy trees was taken without the identification of the species or their dimensions.”

The bench said: “It appears from a circular dated October 24, 2008, that an in-house sale was held amongst the employees of the Botanical Survey of India (custodian of the garden). The auction seems to have been limited only to fallen trees and does not relate to any trees which have been deliberately cut.” The bench said the probe was necessary because of absence of the records.