16 smugglers held; logs worth 1 cr seized

Kadapa: In separate incidents, police arrested 16 red sanders (RS) smugglers at Rayachoti and Pulivendula forest areas and recovered 50 grade one red sanders logs worth Rs 1 crore and two cars from them on Monday.  

Among them 7 smugglers belong to Karnataka, 2 were from Tamil Nadu and remaining seven from Kadapa and Chittoor districts. The accused were identified as K Viswanatha, G Narayanappa, K N Prakash, R Venkatesh, P Prakash, G Chandra Sekhar and S Subrahmani of K R Puram area of Bangalore city, Karnataka State, and M Ramaswamy Jayaraman and K Apparao of Salem district of Tamil Nadu State.

 Others were identified as S Eswaraiah, A Suresh, M Sivaiah and M Venkata Prakash of Sundupalle mandal in Kadapa district and D Purushotham, S Nagesh and S Manikanta of Chittoor district. 

Addressing a press conference at Rayachoti police station, OSD A Lakshmi Narayana said each accused was involved in at least 4 cases related to illegal transportation of red sanders from Kadapa district. 

He said that among them, Appa Rao, Eswaraiah and Suresh were the most wanted as they were responsible in transporting the precious wood from Seshachalam, Nallamala and Lankamalleswara forest areas in Kadapa district.