Minister for Forests and Environment Bojjala Gopalakrishna Reddy on Wednesday said the April 7 encounter in Seshachalam forests, in which 20 woodcutters from Tamil Nadu were killed in the Task Force raids, was not an aggression against the Tamils, but was a war against the red sanders smugglers.
The Minister was speaking to the media after launching a Night Shelter for the urban homeless here. He said the SIT (Special Investigation Team) would soon unravel the truth in the encounter. "We will continue to ruthlessly curb the smuggling activity and none, whosoever big, would be spared. Except for a few sections, the general public had not made any criticism against the Seshachalam encounter. In Chittoor district, we have Tamil population close to 30 per cent and they always lived in harmony with all communities."
The Minister said smugglers had already played havoc with the red sanders in the forests. “At present, we have 1.12 crore trees left in our forests. The government has embarked on the mission to amend the existing laws governing protection of forests and wildlife,” he added.
Meanwhile, Divisional Forest Officer (Chittoor) T. Chakrapani told The Hindu that peripheral trenches would come over a stretch of 1600 km covering over 6,000 hectares of forests with concentration of red sanders in the Rayalaseema districts and parts of coastal AP. “The trench will measure three metres at the surface and two metres at the bottom, with a depth of three metres. Apart from curtailing free movement of smugglers and vehicles into the forests, these trenches will effectively serve as the water conservation projects in the State, leading to protection of green cover in a big way.” An initial amount of Rs 30 crore has already been released for this work, he said
