India, March 28 -- The 100-odd tenements on reclaimed land abutting a retaining wall of the Coastal Road at Worli might seem like typical unauthorised structures in Mumbai - except they could be part of a calculated land-grab by builders to take control of prime real estate along the city's western seafront.

The structures, erected recently at Markandeshwar Nagar, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Nagar and Madraswadi in Worli, are now being demolished by the civic authorities on a complaint from an alert citizen. But activists suspect these slum-dwellers were brought here by developers, to get them declared as Project Affected Persons (PAPs), as phase one of the Coastal Road winds down to completion. Rehabilitating these purported PAPs would, in tu...