TIRUPATI: AP Red Sanders Anti Smuggling Task Force sleuths arrested two smugglers and seized 14 red sanders logs along with a vehicle and tools at Kothapeta near Naravari Palle village, during the wee hours of Thursday morning.
According to the task force RSI M. Vasu, the arrested were identified as Abu Baker, hailing from Krishnagiri district and Venkatesan, a native of Vellore district in Tamil Nadu.
"Acting on a tip-off about the smugglers' movement, we conducted a combing operation near Kothapeta of Naravari Palli on Wednesday night.
Before midnight, while we were on stay at the by-pass road here, we spotted a vehicle that was leaving the forest and we followed it.
On sighting our teams, the smugglers tried to escape with the vehicle and we managed to stop them after a 30 min chase on the State highway", RSI said.
However, after stopping the smugglers' vehicle, the taskforce caught Abu Baker, who came as a helper with the driver.
"After receiving information from the nabbed smuggler, we went to the forest, where the other smugglers were dropped off to cut the logs. We spotted 20 smugglers carrying logs", RSI said.
The task force teams managed to catch only one smuggler out of 20 and recovered 14 red sanders logs and other materials from the site.
