Indore (Madhya Pradesh)
On the lines of red sandalwood smuggling shown in the Telugu movie Pushpa, teakwood was smuggled from the forests of Indore and sent to Narmada river by boat for a couple of months.
The case was unravelled recently after six months of action.
However, forest officials have taken stringent action and ended the entire chain of wood smugglers.
More than half a dozen actions have been taken to control the smuggling. Under the actions, chopping machines worth lakhs of rupees were seized.
Choral range has proved to be a favourite for timber smugglers for the past couple of years. The reason why this happens is attributed to lack of monitoring in the forests.
From the village adjoining the Narmada river to Sanawad, teak is smuggled by boat and sometimes via road routes.
Forest officers and employees have caught these smugglers with teak by going into the dense forests. Along with officers of Barwah and Padalya range, they have also confiscated chopping machines by going to the villages adjoining Narmada river.
Choral Range Officer Ravikant Jain said, “To control smuggling in the area, we launched stern actions and used several measures on any information.” He added that the team would block ways from 12 pm to 6 am whenever they got information about smuggling.
They recovered wood and bikes from the forests at night or caught them on the road in the early morning. On January 27, six bikes and 41 teak were seized.
In the market the price of one teak bundle is more than Rs 10,000. However, as they smuggled the wood, it was sold for Rs 25,000 in grey market.
A few months ago, four consignments were caught on biked. All were stolen bikes. Along with this, saw machines have been confiscated from three villages adjoining Narmada. In each action 2.2 cubic meters of wood was confiscated.
In all three actions, an amount of more than Rs 7 lakh was seized. More than 15 accused are still on the run, officers said.
