The district police, in a raid on Saturday morning, unearthed a red sanders dump near Challa Kaluvu stream near Gudur town and arrested 13 woodcutters from Tamil Nadu who were trying to transport the felled logs to Chennai.
As many as 11 red sanders logs weighing 190 kg was also seized during the operation. The market value of the logs is around Rs. 6 lakh, it is learnt.
According to police, acting on a tip-off by from a local resident about the suspicious movement of strangers in the neighbourhood, a team of police personnel conducted the raid.
The arrested persons have been identified as Chinapayyan Buchayan (29), Raj Govindraj (26), Periyappan Sakkarai (38), Kuppan Sampath (22), Kuppan Mohan (28), Pattu Ramachandran (29), Karian Jayaraman (35), Vellayan Ramakrishnan (20), Periyappan Govindraju (19), Venkatesan Vijji (30), Munuswamy Murugan (29), Kuppan Ramesh (33) and Periyappan Sekhar (22), all of them hailing from Tiruvannamalai district of Tamil Nadu.
The wood cutters were busy digging the dump and cutting the logs into smaller pieces to facilitate their easy transportation, when the raid was conducted.
However, two other persons, identified as Rajendran and Ravi, who had hired the workers, managed to give police a slip. Additional SP R. Gangadhar said efforts were on to find out the kingpins of the illegal trade.
Published - September 20, 2015 12:00 am IST
