n August 11, the district police seized 14 red sanders logs from a cattle shed in Line Kothuru village in the district. The Forest Department put the estimated value of the logs in the international market anywhere between Rs. 10 lakh and Rs.15 lakh. This being the third such case in the last one year, both the police and Custom officials do not rule out the possibility of Visakhapatnam being used as one of the main transit points for smuggling of the precious wood as the city offers sea and road connectivity. There are two getaways from the city — the smugglers may take the sea route and land the cargo in some port located in South Asian countries or take the road route to Burma via Kolkata and then tranship the cargo to countries such as China or Japan, where red sanders are in huge demand, according to Yellamanchili Circle Inspector K. Venkat Rao. Though the police are yet to nab the persons who dumped the red sanders in the cattle shed, initial investigations point to a bigger network.
“It appears that the logs had been dumped in haste to avoid detection at check-posts,” said Mr. Venkat Rao, who led a team to raid the cattle shed and seize the wood.
In June last year, the Two Town police seized a container truck loaded with red sanders near Gokul theatre in the Allipuram area. The logs were camouflaged behind banana leaves, banana, and ice crates. Investigations revealed that the logs, valued at about Rs. 5 crore, were being taken to Kolkata. In the same month, sleuths of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) seized a container loaded with about 26 tonnes of red sanders, valued at over Rs. 12 crore, at the port, minutes before they were to be loaded into a Hong Kong-bound ship.
Police say that initial investigations point to a
bigger network
