In a joint operation, the Renigunta police and the sleuths of the Redsanders Anti-Smuggling Taskforce (RSASTF) have nabbed 32 persons, suspecting them to be woodcutters on a mission to fell precious red sanders trees in Seshachalam forest.
The cops swooped down upon a group of people moving suspiciously near the Venkatapuram burial ground who tried to flee on sighting the movement of the police vehicles.
The arrested were all native of Jamunamarathur and Polur taluks of Tiruvannamalai district of Tamil Nadu, considered to be the epicentre of redsanders business that dispatches woodcutters to Seshachalam for felling trees.
Deputy Superintendents of Police (Renigunta) K.S. Nanjundappa, Ravi Kumar (Taskforce) and Deputy Forest Range Officer Durga Prasad, who led the teams, told the media here on Friday that the accused were nabbed while preparing to commit an offence and that they had been previously involved in similar offences.
Twenty two axes, rice bags and groceries were seized from their possession.
Circle Inspector K. Balaiah informed that K. Kumar and Devaraj alias Thyagarajan, the maistries who had brought the workers for the ‘assignment’, fled the spot. Special teams had been formed to nab them while the arrested were remanded to custody.
The arrested were identified as R. Chinnaraj, C. Ramesh, V. Sekhar, D. Murugan, R. Anbalagan, M. Subramani, A. Annasami, V. Ramachandran, R. Murugesan, Chinnandi, Rajendran, S. Govindaswami, Muthuselvam, Karthikeyan, C. Appaswami, K. Kamaraj, L. Ramachandran, C. Rajendran, R. Alagesan, P. Ponnusami, C. Jayaraman, J. Murugesan, G. Vinod Kumar, M. Ramaraj, B.Sivakumar, R.Ramesh, C. Sankar, Velmurugan, R. Soundar (all from Tiruvannamalai district), G. Elumalai and V. Ramamurthy (both Vellore district) and J.S. Haribabu (Chennai).
The police dismissed reports that appeared in a section of the media that they were arrested from a train the previous night.