The demonetisation of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 is expected to deal a deathblow to the well-organised international red sanders smuggling network spread all over Asian countries, with focus on China, Dubai, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore.
The contraband trade involving thousands of crores of rupees is not going to be a cakewalk to the smugglers hereafter as the entire money changing hands from overseas destinations to the country of origin is entirely dependent on hawala transactions, according to senior officials of the Red Sanders Anti-Smuggling Task Force (RSASTF) here.
During the last two years, the task force with its combined presence of police and forest officials has come to study the various stages of red sanders smuggling from organising hired labour force for felling of red sanders trees in six districts of Andhra Pradesh to the transportation of the wood to various South East Asian and Gulf countries, from where the consignments would ‘officially’ enter the patronising countries of China and Japan.
Though hundreds of cases were booked against the stakeholders, neither the police nor forest officials could seize any substantial cash. This phenomenon points the powerful presence of ‘hawala’ mode of payments.
As part of executing orders from overseas smugglers based in Dubai and SE Asian countries, domestic smugglers take the risk of investing huge cash, utilising the services of labour-suppliers; procurement of vehicles for illegal transportation in various stages from Seshachalam foothills to seaports and airports; and fulfilling a number of formalities in the forbidden trade.
“As and when consignments reach their set destinations abroad, domestic network members get a call from hawala operators. They just go and pick up their bundles of currency,” say officials. Welcoming demonetisation, RSASTF chief and DIG M. Kantha Rao observed that it would surely go a long way in putting an end to the two-decade-long menace. “During our investigations, we detected that the trade is mainly operating in the hawala mode. We also detected one outlet in the Burma Bazaar area in Chennai, where hawala payments take place. The smugglers will feel the impact for a minimum of two years,” the DIG observed.
DSP (RSASTF) Sridhar Rao observed that it was a fallacy that red sanders logs are directly getting transported to China and Japan. “Restrictions on red sanders trade exist only in India. At the same time, the goods can’t enter China without valid documents. Hence, the Gulf and South East Asian countries serve the purpose of smugglers as the platform to jump restrictions,” the official said. Officials observed that Velur Subbaiah Sakthivel (45), a resident of Red Hills in Chennai, a practising dental surgeon, was lured by the big fortunes of smuggling through his relatives a couple of years ago. His spouse is also a dental surgeon, and both were operating a hospital.
Establishing links with notorious smuggler Sahul Bhai of Dubai, Sakthivel kept processing the hawala payments till he was arrested in March.
The Kadapa police, who arrested four Chinese nationals in Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh on December 25, 2015, had detected the hawala transactions in New Delhi.
