The seizure of 17 red sanders logs last fortnight near Kanakamma Satram by the Tiruvallur police just across the Tamil Nadu border was not a sporadic incident of endemic red sanders crossing the Seshachalam Hills.
There were at least three major incidents of seizure recorded in Tamil Nadu in the recent times, which is a grave pointer to the failure of the surveillance mechanism.
The Red Sanders Anti Smuggling Task Force (RSASTF) was formed to prevent entry of poachers into the forest, but it is largely content with chasing vehicles and recovering smuggled wood, rather than strengthening its intelligence network and acting upon inputs gathered from the sources.
The chinks in its surveillance armour were further exposed when red sanders logs were recently found in pockets along the southern Tamil Nadu coast, an area that hitherto remained largely unexplored.
On August 26, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence seized 40 tonnes of logs worth ₹16 crore from a container in Chennai port, which were being smuggled to Malaysia under the garb of some export cargo consignment. On September 21, Customs officials of Thoothukudi seized 9.5 tonnes of logs worth ₹3 crore that were on their to Malaysia, on the outskirts of Madurai.
Network
The biggest one in the recent times was the seizure of 168 logs in Ramanathapuram district, on its way to Rameswaram. “They have a huge network out there down south. There are sea routes that open up from Velankanni, Vedaranyam and beyond. But, this is the first major seizure of a huge quantity of red sanders in our region, which we believe had come from the Tirupati forest,” said I. Rajesh, a police Inspector with Tamil Nadu CID. Mr. Rajesh was part of the team that seized the consignment near Rameswaram.
International market
The police are of the firm view that the contraband was being smuggled to Sri Lanka, from where it would hit the international market in the South East Asian region.
Understandably, the pressure on the task force seems to be growing to act tough on the woodcutters entering the forest, rather than seize and parade the recovered logs before the media.
