Who Speaks For The Mithi?

Abstract

Indian law readily identifies victims when a human being is injured, a corporation suffers loss, public property is 
damaged, or minerals are unlawfully extracted. River degradation exposes a different structural problem: the 
ecosystem may be the immediate object of injury, yet it ordinarily has no continuous legal voice of its own. This 
article examines that gap through Mumbai's Mithi River. It advances the concept of an ‘ecological victim’: a 
legally protected natural entity that suffers measurable degradation of ecological structure, function, biodiversity 
or regenerative capacity. The article distinguishes direct river standing from citizen standing, and argues that the 
strongest reform would not require a fresh public-interest petitioner every time the Mithi is injured. Instead, 
Maharashtra could confer limited legal personality on the Mithi by statute and appoint an independent Guardian 
who acts only procedurally, while the substantive claim remains that of the River itself. 
The article integrates four bodies of law that are usually treated separately: environmental restitution under the 
National Green Tribunal Act 2010; the Polluter Pays and Public Trust doctrines; criminal and public-law 
responsibility for unlawful acts and culpable omissions; and comparative river personhood under New Zealand's 
Te Awa Tupua framework. It argues that civil and restorative liability is at least as important as criminal 
prosecution. Pollution may destroy aquatic fauna, flora, water quality, habitat and ecological services even where 
no individual human claimant can quantify a private loss. Indian law already recognises restitution of the 
environment and compensation for aquatic fauna, flora, water and ecosystems. The article therefore proposes a 
Mithi River Protection, Rights and Restoration Act, a ring-fenced Restoration Fund, a statutory Seven-Factor 
Ecological Omission Test for public-authority responsibility, and carefully delimited direct standing for the River. 
The proposal does not assume that BMC is liable whenever the Mithi is polluted. Liability must follow duty, 
knowledge, control, capacity, causation and the applicable standard of culpability. The broader claim is 
institutional: if law can create corporations and protect public assets that cannot speak, it can create a legal voice 
for a river whose injury is scientifically measurable and whose restoration serves both ecological integrity and 
constitutional environmental values.