Bareilly: UP CM Yogi Adityanath on Saturday announced that forest cases lodged against around 4,000 Tharu tribals would be withdrawn, bringing relief to poor villagers and their families who had been fighting the cases for over a decade.The announcement, made in Lakhimpur Kheri, comes months after TOI, in a Nov 11, 2025 report, detailed how the forest dept had booked members of the Tharu community in 2012, including people who were blind, physically or mentally disabled, elderly villagers and even those who were dead.Without naming Samajwadi Party, Yogi said the previous govt had protected mafias and habitual offenders while harassing the Tharu community during its struggle. “The previous govt used to nurture mafias and habitual offenders in every city. They harassed the Tharu community by filing forged cases against them during their struggle, but now BJP govt won’t let this happen,” he said, before adding, “We will withdraw the cases.”TOI had reported how many of those booked were poor and illiterate villagers who kept appearing in court for years to fight cases for offences they said they had never committed.Among those named in FIRs was 40-year-old Surdas Ram Bhajan, blind since birth, who lives with his family in Sariya Parah, a Tharu village about 1.5 km from the India-Nepal border near Dudhwa Tiger Reserve. “I have never even seen the forest,” he had told TOI. “I walk with my 70-year-old mother’s help — she holds one end of a stick, and I hold the other. My younger brother, Rajjan, is mentally disabled and has remained shackled in chains since childhood, yet both of us were booked.”After the CM’s announcement, Surdas said the decision lifted a burden his family had been carrying for years. “I want to thank MLA Romi Sahani and CM for their gift to us,” he said. Their mother, Gulaboo Devi, said, “My sons never even went to the forest, but the department trapped them in false cases. But now we’re happy that we are free.” Rajjan, 37, had been accused of illegal tree felling.Another villager, Har Dayal Singh, 55, who suffers from a chronic spinal disorder and cannot stand upright, had been charged with climbing trees to destroy bird nests. “They say I climbed a tree. I can barely stand,” he had said, adding after Saturday’s announcement that he could now live peacefully without having to keep making rounds of the courts. In Sariya Parah, where the population is around 1,500, at least 375 residents had been booked under various provisions of the Indian Forest Act and the Wildlife (Protection) Act.Sahani, who represents Palia constituency, said, “I was working on this for so long but TOI story gave our effort a major boost and finally we are seeing the fruits of the efforts.”Members of the Tharu community said their lives would become easier now, especially as the relief came alongside recognition of their land rights. The Tharus, an indigenous community of the Terai region of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar and southern Nepal, have historically depended on farming and forest-linked livelihoods. But after Dudhwa was declared a national park in 1977 and later a tiger reserve in 1988, several Tharu villages came to live within or along protected forest zones, sharply restricting their traditional access to land and resources.Although the Forest Rights Act, 2006, was meant to recognise the rights of scheduled tribes and traditional forest dwellers over habitation, cultivation and forest use, many Tharu claims in Lakhimpur Kheri were either rejected or left pending.