BENGALURU: A gang of 15 red sander smugglers who travelled from Bengaluru, were nabbed by a joint team of the Red Sanders Anti-Smuggling Task Force (RSASTF) and Police Department in the Seshachalam forests in Tirupati on Tuesday morning.
Speaking to The New Indian Express, a senior police officer from the team said, “The gangs which are mostly from Kerala and Salem are venturing into Seshachalam which has the costliest Red Sander tress.”
“The task force found some beedi packets and rice bags in the forest. After searching some more we found a gang of 15 men. We had an altercation with them after which they were nabbed. They revealed that this was their second time in the forests. They had smuggled many logs from here earlier as well. They claimed that Bengaluru was a safe place to take refuge as Vellore has been under tight scrutiny,” the officer said.
To tackle the red sanders menace in the state and to protect precious forest wealth, an inter-state coordination meeting was held recently with DGs of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu.
“A decision to increase vigilance in eight forest divisions, prone to red sander smuggling, spread over Kadapa, Nellore, Chittoor, Kurnool and Prakasam districts, has been taken. Karnataka’s cooperation has been sought in this regard as the smugglers from Kerala and Salem gain easy access to the forests through Karnataka. They may install CCTV cameras in these zones,” a senior officer said.
Nodal officers have been nominated from all three states. According to the data base available with Andhra Pradesh task force there are nearly 80,000 families who are into red sanders smuggling. Sources say that every year, nearly 2,500 people are arrested.
The logs are dispatched to South East Asian countries through Chennai port.
What are red sanders?
Red sanders is a rare kind of sandalwood (Pterocarpus santalinus) that grows only in the Palakonda and Seshachalam hills in Andhra Pradesh. These logs which are not used as much in India, but they feed a global trafficking network stretching from the Persian Gulf to China.