TN smuggler caught with red sanders in Andhra forest

According to RSI Vasu and DRO Narsimha Rao, a task force team along with forest personnel, who carried out a combing operation from Monday night, spotted footprints of a group of men at Sachinodi Banda and Eetha Gunta areas.

The team devised a strategy to nab the smugglers and split themselves into three groups and managed to nab a smuggler from near zoo park area .

However, other smugglers fled the spot leaving the logs. The task force recovered 14 red sanders logs thrown into the bushes. Twelve were recovered by the force and two other logs were seized with the help of sniffer dogs.

The smuggler nabbed by the force was identified as Annamalai, a native of Jawadhu hills in Tamil Nadu. He told the Task Force that he was part of 14-member group, which came from Jawadhu Hills, to chop and transport red sander logs.

RSI Vasu revealed that they seized logs and arrested smugglers more than 20 times at this place earlier.

Task Force DSP Venkataramana who reached the place immediately after knowing the information, expressed concern over uprooting the endemic trees and said the smugglers’ activities will affect the environmentally-sensitive Seshachalam forest.

In the past years also, several residents from same Jawadhu Hills who went to cut red sanders in the Seshachalam forests were either arrested or killed by special teams of Andhra Pradesh police. On some occasions there have been fierce encounters between the cops and the smugglers. The illegal cutting and smuggling of trees has internations links.