7 smugglers held; 3 lakh worth logs seized

Ramagundam: The Ramagundam Task Force, Law & Order police along with Manthani CCS officials busted wood smuggling gang and arrested its seven members here on Wednesday. According to Ramagundam Commissioner of Police P Satyanarayana, acting over a tip-off, the police raided the godowns of Edla Srinivas, a saw mill owner and reportedly smuggling wood, and seized 10 wood logs worth Rs 3 lakhs.

The arrested were identified as R Chandrashekar (26), M Sammaiah (30), T Sanjeev (34), S Lachaiah (55), Ch Sammaiah (40), K Sridhar (32) and A Sammaiah (32), all belonging to Manthani. Edla Srinivas, K Kishan, K Madhukar and R Srinivas are absconding.

Following Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s orders to make tight security to protect the forests, the police department in coordination with forest department constituted two special teams to track down wood smuggling and nab wood smugglers.

The special teams came to know that Edla Srinivas has formed a 20-member gang for transporting wood illegally to Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra from Manthani and Mahadevapur forest regions and conducted raids seizing 10 logs hidden under the sand.

The police registered a case and started man-hunt for the absconding four members of the gang. The CP appreciated the police team constating of Additional DCP (Administration) Ashok Kumar, Additional DCP (Law & Order) Ravi Kumar, Task Force Circle Inspector Sagar, Sarilal, Sub-inspector Sammaiah and Manthani Sub-Inspector Mahendar for bursting the gang of wood smugglers.