On 13 December 1996, taking suo motu cognisance of a press report on a Himachal motel that had encroached on protected forest land and diverted the Beas, a Division Bench of the Supreme Court formally received the Public Trust Doctrine into Indian law — quashing the prior approvals and lease, ordering restitution at the motel's cost and issuing show-cause on exemplary damages. A digest of the doctrine, why the Court read it into Articles 21 and 48A, and how it has since travelled from rivers and forests to spectrum and coal.