Red sanders smugglers use high-end cars, SUVs

Nellore: Red sanders smugglers are deploying branded and costly cars and other vehicles to transport the precious wood on the sly through Nellore, instead of their usual mode of trucks or vans.

Law enforcement agencies, which routinely check suspicious lorries and vans, rarely suspect the costly cars This is the result of poor security at many check-posts where red sanders logs are cut in forests spread in Kadapa and Chittoor districts and shift them via Nellore district without any hassle.

Forest officials also admit that there has been no fool-proof system to check vehicles at many junctions between Venkatagiri and Tirupati. This is encouraging smugglers to smuggle logs to the destinations across the country via Nellore.

Chittoor, Kadapa and Nellore are the only districts where red sanders is available and smugglers from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and other parts of the country set up camps at important places for monitoring the day-to-day smuggling activity.

As the enforcement wings are focusing on transport vehicles for shifting the wood from forest areas, smugglers are purchasing popular branded cars and Sports Utility Vehicles (SUV) for easy movement as the police and forest officials treat them as passenger vehicles.

“The trend has increased recently where smugglers were using costly passenger vehicles for illegal transportation of red sanders logs. We normally identify passenger vehicles and these vehicles don’t have seating giving some clue on the suspected activity. So, we thoroughly check them and find the contraband inside,” said a senior forest official connected to the operations on the National Highway–16.  

Some people use MLA, MLC and other VIP stickers to mislead enforcement personnel while carrying out smuggling operations. Despite this, police personnel are checking each and every vehicle for any such malpractices hiding material under seats and others.

“Even though hundreds of tonnes of logs were being caught by enforcement wings, still the activity is going on. We know that there is a loophole in the vigilance system where lower cadre employees support the activity. But, only solution is intensifying checks and apprehending the culprits. We also found that only labourers were being caught while kingpins escape,” said a senior police official.  

There were an instance that a big smuggler from Tamil Nadu arranged a transit warehouse close to Sullurpet some time ago for storing and cutting 
the smuggled material. Sullurpet, Naidupet and other places close to the Naidupet-Srikalahasti road are hotspots for such activity.