Pitiable health/education system, lack of alternative livelihood options and not recognising the unique timber felling skills of ‘Malayali’ tribes underlie the gunning down of twenty woodcutters by Special Task Force police in the Seshachalam forest area near Tirupati on April 7.
A three-member committee of Advocate Commissioners appointed by the Madras High Court that visited Kalrayan Hills to study the living conditions of tribals there submitted its report on Monday.
The report has made a specific reference to the police firing in the Seshachalam forest area near Tirupati.
A majority of the woodcutters who were shot dead were ‘Malayali’ tribals from Villuppuram, Salem and Tiruvannamalai districts.
The ‘Malayali’ tribals, the report says, function cohesively as teams of 5 to 6 persons and can fell a tall, full grown tree within hours.
The uniqueness was the near soundless way they cut, prune, size and carry the logs over distances as long as 25-30 km away without a break.
Quoting Forest Department officials, the Advocate Commissioners, including V. Suresh of People’s Union for Civil Liberties, said the only people who realised the unique skills of the tribals of Kalrayan Hills are the timber smuggling mafia of Andhra Pradesh who have been systematically luring them by offering major advances and promising sums of money which tribal labourers cannot earn normally.
The smugglers chose the tribal labourers because their “stamina and strength was matched by their exceptional navigation skills or ‘directional’ ability to find a way through dense forests, even during night times.”
