CHITTOOR: Nearing two years of its formation, the Andhra Pradesh Red Sanders Anti-Smuggling Task Force (RSASTF) has mooted steps to sensitise the officials of the Central Board of Excise and Customs with regard to the red sanders overseas smuggling activity.
The field study of the Task Force revealed that the red sanders smugglers could easily produce the fake documents, particularly such as ‘Certificate of Origin’, while transporting the contraband red sanders logs to overseas destinations such as the Gulf and South East Asian countries. There is no scientific mechanism available with the Customs officials at airports and seaports to check the authenticity of the fake documents.
The officials observed that a majority of the fake documents pertaining to certification of origin of red sanders logs were produced in Chennai. Though the Forest Department of Tamil Nadu too issues the documents in limited number of cases, majority of the shipments move to overseas through fake documents submitted by the smugglers.
It is further observed that though there are small plantations of red sanders in some areas of Tamil Nadu and they are yet to come to a stage for commercial exploitation either by private parties or by the Forest Department, the documents of origin are originating from the TN districts.
RSASTF head and DIG M. Kantha Rao said that he had addressed letters to the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (AP) to initiate steps through the State government to sensitise the Customs officials at all vulnerable exit routes to put scientific surveillance of transporting red sanders logs, and install scientific detection methods to fix fake documents.
No special category for regional tree species
Another major obstacle in preventing the red sanders smuggling is that the species are notified in the ‘others’ category of the Customs modules, and that these highly endemic regional tree species of the Rayalaseema region are not given any special category or mention.
In spite of the inter-State operations across India, the red sanders species once crosses Andhra Pradesh would get treated as any other normal wood variety meant for commercial purposes. The forest and police officials of other States hold little or no attention towards red sanders species in the absence of any fixed Central policy on them, the official said.
It was also communicated to the State government that though the police and forest officials book some of the notorious smugglers under the Preventive Detention (PD) Act, the Act does not hold any mention to the crime regarding red sanders smuggling. In view of this, the accused in many cases have advantage to obtain bails and weakening of the cases.
