Police turn heat on red sanders smugglers

Kadapa: The police have turned the heat on red sanders smugglers. A task force led by the Superintendent of Police has been constituted to crack the whip against smugglers. The police continue to arrest smugglers. Last month, the Task Force officials held combing operations on an extensive scale in the Seshachalam forest areas and also arrested an international smuggler Bodde Venkataramana and seized red sanders logs worth crores of rupees.

Three days ago, another smuggler Madhava Reddy was also taken into custody by the Nellore district police in Hyderabad. On Saturday, another international smuggler Badaania in Mangali village of Nissar district in Haryana was arrested and seized red sanders logs worth Rs 20 crore along. A swamiji, who had allegedly purchasing the logs from Badaania, was also arrested. Badaania had been carrying out the smuggling activities clandestinely in Chittoor and Kadapa districts.

The police busted the smuggling activities in Nissar after interrogating a smuggler Vijayasimha Reddy who was arrested by the police in Badvel. Badaania would be shifted to Kadapa soon. During the investigations, it came to the notice of the police that the smugglers had organised large dump yards in the neighbouring states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Haryana and Telangana.

Such dump yards were found in the Ranga Reddy and Nalgonda districts in Telangana State, the police claimed. In this connection, recently, the police seized a large quantity of red sanders logs from a dump in Ranga Reddy district. Wtih the help of the Central government, the police seized several dumps of red sanders logs in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Not only in India, the Special Task Force has also targeted red sanders smuggling activities in countries like China, Japan and Malaysia.

By Nagaraju