Overactive Chennai smuggling gang poses a threat to red sander trees: Officers

A Chennai based smuggling gang, controls over 90 per cent of the illegal trade of the expensive wood. They have been encouraging poachers in the Andhra Pradesh forests to cut more trees from the wild.

“Though trading in red sander logs is banned in India, what is shocking is that some shops in the city are selling red sander furniture on the sly to certain ‘privileged customers,’ say officials. “Nothing can be done to book the shop owner as he is backed by a well-connected group,” rues an official. 

Various seizures of the contraband have been effected by the officials of agencies like Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, Customs and Chennai police. “The seizures are just tip of an iceberg, most of the consignments go without any interception,” says an official. 

“The persons we arrest while seizing the red sander logs are those in the end part of the smuggling chain. They usually have no information about the trade or the people involved in the racket. They work for a wage and have little awareness about the smuggling process,” a senior DRI official told DTNext.

The smugglers are engaging the local villagers in and around the places where the red sander trees grow in abundance like Palakonda and Seshachalam hill areas in Cuddappah and Chittoor districts of Andhra Pradesh to cut the trees and sell it to them, sources say. Limited population of this wood is also found in the neighbouring districts like Anantpur, Kurnool, Prakasam and Nellore. 

Sporadic wild populations are also noted in the Eastern Ghats portion of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. In all these places the smugglers have created well-connected networks of poachers who trespass into the reserve forest, fell the logs and smuggle the wood to Chennai, add the sources. On an average the wood fetches Rs 25 lakh per tonne.

 The top quality i.e. ‘A Grade’ will fetch more than a crore. Recently, the logs had been picked up for a price of Rs 1.5 crore per tonne during a legal auction of the Andhra Pradesh forest department. 

“The smuggling network works meticulously to cut and smuggle the wood out of the forests. In many places the connivance of forest officials helps these smugglers to move the wood out. The mafia pay only Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh per tonne of the wood to the poachers. But they collect as much as Rs 25 to Rs 50 lakh per tonne in the international black market,” the DRI official adds. 

The Andhra Pradesh police’s crackdown and even gunning down of 20 persons involved in cutting the woods has not deterred the smugglers and poachers from carrying out the illegal activity. 

“Only the poor villagers who get lured by the mafia gets killed in such crackdowns,” say sources. Another official says “Officials do know who controls the trade of red sanders in India. But none of the agencies could act against the person because of his top political connections. Large container sheds in Chennai suburbs, especially in Red Hills and Puzhal, are being used to conceal the contraband before being smuggled to countries like China.” 

According to a recent estimate of Andhra Pradesh government, the International demand for red sanders is more than 3,000 tonne per year. If the Chennai mafia is not curtailed at the earliest, the forests will soon be cleared of the species, fears the officials.