In the bloodiest incident in the history of the decades-old menace of red sanders smuggling, 20 woodcutters hailing from Tamil Nadu were killed in an alleged encounter in the Seshachalam forest at the foot of Tirumala hills on Apr 7.
The newly-formed Red-sanders Anti-Smuggling Taskforce comprising personnel drawn from the police and forest departments undertook a combing operation near Srinivasa Mangapuram, Srivarimettu and Eethagunta on the Seshachalam hill ranges on Apr 6 around dusk, when they spotted footprints in the vicinity.
Suspecting movement of woodcutters, one group of taskforce personnel moved towards Eethagunta, and the other towards Cheekateegalakona. On finding over 100 woodcutters felling trees and carrying logs, the personnel asked them to surrender. However, the woodcutters rained stones and hurled sickles at the team, injuring some of them.
“When they started attacking us, we fired random shots in self-defence,” a taskforce member said on condition of anonymity. The firing took place between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m., following which Deputy Inspector-General (Taskforce) M. Kantha Rao rushed to the spot. Rao termed the encounter ‘unfortunate’.
Barring the scale, the encounter killing of 20 red sanders “smugglers” in Andhra Pradesh has not come as a surprise to those watching the illegal industry. Since 2011, such encounters and operations have killed 11 and led to the detention of more than 2,000 — all tribal woodcutters hired by mafia agents.
The timing of the operations reveals a pattern. In 2014, a multi-organisation team led by National Campaign for De-notified Tribes Human Rights (NCDNTHR) probed such killings and detentions and observed:
v If arrested, the local rich in the smuggling racket are sent to the Rajahmundry central prison, so that they could get bail easily, while the majority of the poor tribal woodcutters are booked under the charges of murder or attempted murder.
v Fortune of rival smuggling groups depends on changing political equations, and targeted killings of tribal labourers of a rival smuggling group through the STF by the dominant group are meant to destroy the opponent’s supply base among Tamil tribals who are hired for felling and carrying red sanders.
“Most of those killed are a denotified tribe at the bottom of the social hierarchy, while the majority of those detained belong to other tribes. About 300 of them are still in jail since last April,” said Hyderabad-based M Subba Rao, NCDNTHR national convener.
In the name of cracking down on smugglers, say insiders, the politically powerful gangs of the day have taken out members, usually tribal recruits at the lowest rung, of the rival groups. Indeed, red sanders encounters do seem to have been timed with shifts in the State’s political equations since 2011. Consider these:
v A Tamil labourer, named Varadi, was killed in an allegedly fake encounter during the tenure of Forest Minister Peddireddy Rama Chandra Reddy in 2011.
v After the resignation of Peddireddy in November 2012, another labourer from Tamil Nadu, Murugan, was killed in December 2012.
v Another, named Sambarian Mani, was killed in January 2014, weeks before Kiran Kumar Reddy resigned as Chief Minister.
v Days before Chandrababu Naidu became Chief Minister, Vijaykanth, Venkatesh and Siva — all below 25, belonging to denotified tribes and neighbours in an interior village near Javadi hills of Tamil Nadu — were killed in May 2014.
v Another five were killed in the forests of Chittoor and Kadapa districts between June 21 and August 6, 2014.
v Subsequently about 2,000 Tamils were arrested from railway stations and bus stands — rather than crime spots — and branded smugglers and kept in various jails in Nellore, Chittoor and Kadapa districts. Two of them died.
v Last year, the Nellore district jail had about 440 booked in the red sanders case, and of them 236 were booked on the charges of murder and the remaining for attempted murder.
“These tribal woodcutters from Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvannamalai, Salem, Dharamapuri and Villupuram districts traditionally worked in coffee estates and also in sugarcane fields before they were lured by red sander smugglers and their agents. We need independent inquiries into these killings,” said S Anna Durai, Tamil Nadu convener of NCDNTHR.
According to the 2014 report, red sanders smuggling involves four layers of operation. Tribal woodcutters and local carriers/loaders belong to the first rung. At the second stage, transporters operate in connivance with the forest and police departments. Next are the exporters who take it out of the country. At the fourth level are the managers who oversee everything from recruitment to negotiation and report to the political kingpin.
While the woodcutters rarely make more than Rs 10,000 per tree (average 200 kg), the booty fetches between Rs 40-60 lakh per tonne abroad. Last November, the State government earned Rs 1,000 crore by auctioning a huge cache of confiscated red sanders. A second auction of 3,500 tonnes will be notified soon
They say it was an encounter. But a close look suggested it was a massacre.
One of the 11 men killed at Vacchinodu Banda in Chandragiri, a kilometer from the other site in Etagunta, who lay with bullet wounds on his chest, had a new pair of sandals on his feet, their sole almost unsoiled. He wore boxer shorts.
The special task force said he was among the men cutting trees and transporting the logs when they surrounded them. They attacked the force, an officer said, forcing them to retaliate. At the shooting spot in Vacchinodu Banda, there were no red sanders trees in the vicinity. The bodies were on a clearing in a shrub jungle.
And the logs strewn around the spot near the bodies were evidently not fresh: A few of them had numbers neatly painted on them, hinting that they must be from an earlier seizure. Some of the bodies bore burn marks besides the bullet wounds. The two clearings are apart by about a 40-minute trek up a dirt track made by the Forest department to reach Kalyani dam from the main road near Tirupati. Police said the men were in two groups, bringing down red sanders. A pungent smell hung over the air in the afternoon when Andhra STF personnel started removing the bodies using hired labourers. “The bodies have been lying in the sun. That’s why the smell,“ said a police officer making an inquest. “The burn marks are actually peeled skin because of the summer heat.“
The men who fell to bullets in Etagunda wore jeans and shirts. They all appeared to be aged between 30 and 50. More than a dozen medium-sized logs were found near the bodies. STF men said they were “violent smugglers.“ The weapons they carried: Axes, knives, sickles and stones.
A dirt track through the thorny bushes that leads to the clearing in Etagunda had blood smears on stones and earth. A police officer said red sanders grew in the forest on the other side of the hills. “It takes a long trek to reach the other side. They cut the trees and bring the logs all the way,“ he said. The police filled eight bags of `evidence’ including weapons and blood clots from the soil. CPI state secretariat member P Harinath Reddy, who visited the spots, said the knives the men carried were rusted. “It’s a staged encounter. The government is targeting workers instead of going after contractors who employ them to smuggle the wood.“
The bodies, covered in mats and tied to bamboos, were carried down the hills and once they reached the road, they were piled one over another in the back of a truck and a tractor hired from Tirupati. There were no stretchers. The tractor trundled down the dirt track and moved slowly to a hospital in the town where postmortem was conducted. Police said ambulances couldn’t reach the vicinity, but reporters in cars could travel all the way up a kilometer from the spot.
A steady spurt in demand for red sanders in the global market has lured smugglers into the forest areas of Andhra Pradesh. Way back in 2002 first quality red sanders wood fetched Rs 2.5 lakh per tonne, but the same quality now fetches Rs 60 lakh per tonne. However, its value doubles in the international market, as is evident from prices in the global e-auction conducted by the Andhra government last year where it touched Rs. 1.5 crore per tonne.
“There has been a 20-fold increase in the price of red sanders logs, which is mainly exported to China for making furniture and Japan for musical instruments. A double cot made of red sanders is priced at Rs15 lakh. The trees in the forest have little protection. A small investment with a bit of risk could fetch crores of rupees -this is the attitude of the mafia, who hire Tamil labourers from hilly areas bordering AP,“ the officer said.
What’s more, in the last decade, a new use was found, which led to further increase in demand. It was believed red sanders saw dust had properties that could absorb radiation of nuclear reactors.
A senior officer from the Tamil Nadu Forest department said a uniqueness of this tree species is it allows coppicing, which is a practice of cutting trees at the base and allowing the shoots to grow from the stump. This method is a highly sustainable one, producing rapidly growing useful wood without replanting them. The red sanders growing naturally in Andhra forests develop a girth of one metre in 40 years, which is a faster growth rate than that of sandalwood trees, the officer said. In Andhra Pradesh, the government has classified red sanders into three categories: Grade A, B and C. The quality of wood in the plantations of Tamil Nadu is not even classified. So there is no demand for the wood found in the State.
When so many developments were taking place on the border areas and poor tribal people were killed in police firings, thousands of them languishing in prisons in Andhra Pradesh and reports of police tortures were coming, the lethargic ADMK regime was remaining complacent all along when it was led by Jayalalitha and now by her benami. The ADMK government should have taken serious note of the threat issued by the chief of the STF Kanta Rao telling media that the ‘heinous smugglers from the neighbouring State’- implying the innocent wood cutters- would be shot and killed and they were awaiting shooting orders from the AP government.
Even after this cold blooded massacre of workers from Tamil Nadu, the incumbent Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam has not reacted with the alacrity required in such critical hour while his Ministers are engrossed in organising yagas and homams for the acquittal of their Amma. r (12-04-15
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