CHITTOOR:Chittoor police who have caught two notorious red sanders smugglers in West Bengal and Chennai along with their associates and seized a large quantity of logs recently, produced the logs before the media here on Sunday.
Altogether, the seized logs and vehicles are worth around `22 crore. Giving details of the operation in West Bengal, SP G Srinivas said the district police, with the cooperation of West Bengal police, seized as many as 316 red sanders logs after raiding three locations on Indo-Bhutan border and arrested international smuggler Sounder Rajan on April 19.
Later, Sounder Rajan was brought to Chittoor and remanded in custody on April 23. The police also brought back all the seized logs from West Bengal, the SP said.
In Chennai, the SP said they have arrested Saravanan, a native of Chennai, along with 11 logs, on April 20. Later, based on the information provided by Saravanan, police conducted raids on two godowns located at SIDCO industrial area and Gandhi Nagar and seized 169 logs.
The police also arrested five accomplice of Saravanan in raids conducted in various parts of Chittoor district. They are: Anandan (30), RS Karna (37), K Ravi (37), K Appan Raj alias Appu (27) and Kudalingam Shanmugam (26). They are all natives of Red Hills area in Chennai.
80 COPS GETREWARDS
Complimenting the police for nabbing the smugglers, the SP handed over rewards to all 80 police personnel who participated in both the operations in West Bengal and Chennai.