Elephant Corridor: Madras HC forms SIT to nab illegal sand miners

CHENNAI: Suspecting the connivance of police officials with illegal land miners and brick kiln operators, the Madras High Court constituted a special investigation team (SIT) to nab the major players behind the disruption of the elephant corridor under the Coimbatore forest division.

The investigation by the jurisdictional police so far has been an eyewash and the arrests of a few individuals a hogwash, the special division bench of Justices N Sathish Kumar and D Bharatha Chakravarty said while constituting the SIT, in a batch of cases preferred by environmental activists seeking action against the offenders.

Typically, the state police don’t spare even an individual found in possession of a few gunny bags of red soil, and it is impossible to transport even small quantities of sand/soil under the eagle eyes of authorities, but in this case, a minimum of two lakh units of earth have been lifted and transported on lorries, and the police couldn’t find where the sand went, the bench wrote.

Since higher officers are tight-lipped about the matter, it rises grave suspicion that station house officers are involved in the episode, the bench noted.

Hence, the court formed an SIT comprising G Nagajothi, Superintendent of Police, State Crime Records Bureau, Chennai, and F Shashank Sai, Superintendent of Police, Organised Crime Intelligence Unit, Chennai. The court allowed the SIT to choose their subordinates to form an official team.

It also ordered that the investigation must continue until it is found to whom the soil was supplied and if brick kilns or builders were found to have used this earth for building resorts, colleges or other institutions, none should be spared, held the bench.

The bench also made it clear that the investigation will be monitored by the court and a periodical status report should be filed, read the order.

The court asked the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) to conduct discrete inquiry into the assets of each and every revenue official -- from village administrative officer, revenue inspector, tahsildar, deputy tahsildars and police officers -- who worked there for the past four years.

The court directed the department of Information Technology and Digital Services of the Tamil Nadu government in collaboration with the Institute of Remote Sensing, Anna University, and other experts to come up with a technological solution for monitoring the area, to avoid such illegal activities in future.

The bench directed the Coimbatore collector to suspend the entire team of the task force constituted to monitor the illegal activities and directed to take appropriate actions against them. The deputy director general of police, Coimbatore range, was directed to take disciplinary actions against the police officers who were found delinquent in their duty.

It also ordered the destruction of the illegal bridges and roads which were laid by offenders to transport the sand and the water bodies to be restored to their original position.

The trenches and pits made by offenders to mine sand should be levelled so as to enable elephants and wild animals to manoeuvre and cross the forest, the bench ordered.

The State should assess the damage done to the forest land and collect fines from the officials responsible for the crime to restore the area by carrying out mitigating measures, added the bench.