The Chittoor task force police on Sunday night and in the early hours of Monday nabbed 12 red sanders smugglers, including two notorious inter-state operators, at six different locations in the district.
Chittoor Superintendent of Police Ghattamaneni Srinivas addressing a press conference here on Monday announced the arrest of the accused, who belonged to four different gangs from Tamil Nadu. The SP said that in all these six incidents, red sander logs of A-Grade variety valued at over Rs. 55 lakh, and four SUVs and two two-wheelers were seized.
Highlight is that for the first time, acid bottles, concrete stones and bamboo sticks were also seized from the accused, who confessed that they kept the material with them with the intention of attacking the police raid parties in case of interception of their vehicles.
K.N. Mohan of Tiruttani of Tiruvallur District of Tamil Nadu, along with his two accomplices - Natarajan Ilango and Dayalan Raja of Tiruttani - were nabbed under the Karvetinagaram police limits on Sunday night.
Mohan was said to have smuggled out over one hundred tonnes of logs since 2012. The Vedrukuppam police nabbed Vallikutti Gopalan of Tiruvannamalai. The SR Puram police arrested Govinda Venkatesh of Vellore in TN and Ganapathi Murugadoss of Vellore. The Gudipala police apprehended Giribabu alias Military Giri of GD Nellore mandal of Chittoor District while he was trying to cross into Tamil Nadu.
The Chittoor police nabbed Mohammad Amjad of Vellore; Armugam of Hosur; and Saikumar of Ganganapalle of Chitoor town. The Irala police arrested M. Rangaiah and Harikrishna of Chittoor District. Regarding the current arrests, the police have intensified operations to nab notorious gang leaders - Madhesh, Thyagaraj and Ramesh of TN.
Mr. Srinivas said that a proposal would be sent to the State Government for constituting special courts in Chittoor District to deal with red sanders cases, which had crossed over 500, with over 3,500 accused, including 46 detainees under the Preventive Detention (PD) Act. "Six more PD Act cases would be booked by this month end," the official said.
