A combing party of the Andhra Pradesh State Red Sanders Anti-Smuggling Task Force on Friday morning seized 19 red sanders logs and nabbed a smuggling operative from Tamil Nadu, while several trespassers reportedly escaped into the thickets at Bhakarapeta ghat section of the Seshachalam hill ranges near Tirupati.
According to the task force officials, a combing party spotted around two dozen smuggling operatives carrying the logs on a slope towards the road point at Bhakarapeta ghat section, 25 km from Tirupati. Seeing the task force, some operatives abandoned the logs in the bushes and fled the scene, while a few others managed to carry the logs deep inside the forest. After a hot chase, the task force managed to nab one operative, identified as Sekhar (30) of Tiruvannamalai district of Tamil Nadu. The task force officials recovered 19 logs from the spot.
Senior task force officials who visited the spot said that additional combing teams were deployed to flush out the smuggling operatives. Preliminary interrogation of the nabbed operative revealed that fresh batches of woodcutters had arrived into the Seshachalam hills a fortnight ago, and had cut several trees to shift the logs to road point. The logs were shifted to the Task Force police station at Tirupati, and the accused was sent to remand.
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