Tamil Nadu proves to be major link in chain for red sanders smuggling

Two months ago, the brother of a prominent politician was arrested while trying to smuggle red sander logs in his BMW. If one goes by the recent arrests, seizures and even a suicide, it looks like Chennai’s links with the red sander racket is getting bigger. A TN police team, raiding a godown at Ambattur a year ago, was shocked to find a huge stockpile of red sanders logs inside.

“It was like we were looking at a hill of red sanders logs. There were over 750 tonnes of red wood. A brother of a north Chennai politician was running the godown. We were asked to hand over the case to the forest department. We did. The forest department arrested the manager of the facility then. I don’t think anything more than that happened at that time,” an official, part of the raiding team, recalled.

What the police team had witnessed was only a tip of the iceberg. The officials feel that a good quantity of the red sanders smuggled out of the Andhra Pradesh forests is hoarded in various godowns in Chennai and Tiruvallur and moved through Chennai port in containers to South East Asian countries where red sanders logs are high in demand for their medicinal value and their use in musical instruments.

Four months ago, during a major crackdown by the AP police which ended with the arrest of 20 persons, believed to be well-connected smugglers, seven were from Chennai. The AP police had arrested key players in the international smuggling racket from Chennai, Bengal, North East, Delhi, Bengaluru and Chittoor. But the activists are not happy with these arrests.

“The AP police had arrested only a handful of big smugglers. They were mainly arresting daily wage workers from TN, hired by these smugglers, merely to show numbers. The police should catch the kingpins involved in it rather than nabbing labourers,” noted Zakir Hussian, a lawyer from Chennai, who had approached the National Human Rights Commission, saying that the AP police had violated all human rights norms in arresting workers from TN in connection with red sanders smuggling.

The lure to do red sander business is very irresistible. “If you pay '200 to 300 per kg of red sanders you get back '1,500 to '2,000 per kg if you make the delivery successfully,” a police officer noted.

These smugglers are not only well connected with smugglers in places like Dubai, China and Japan, but also good at delivering the ‘consignment’ to their foreign clients on time.

If not by port, they will send it by road to neighbouring countries, like Nepal and Myanmar, and later move the consignment from there to their required destinations.

Officials feel that the TN police should have a special unit to tackle the red sanders smugglers.

“Everybody is saying Chennai is turning into a hub of red sander smuggling. But the city police don’t even have a unit to assess the situation. It is always left to forest officials and central agencies, like Customs and DRI, to chase the red sanders smugglers,” the official added.