Tension broke out at Chetti Ramavaram Tanda village in the Ramavaram forest range in Sujathanagar mandal after an altercation between a group of local tribal farmers and a team of Forest department personnel over a ‘podu land’ issue.
According to sources, the incident occurred when some aggrieved tribal farmers put up resistance to the attempts by the Forest staff to take up plantation drive near the village in Ramavaram reserve forest area on Thursday afternoon.
Tense situation prevailed for sometime as a group of tribal farmers took the forest staff to task charging the latter with attacking several women farmers and inflicting injuries on them for resisting their attempts to raise plantations in the lands, which they termed as their ‘podu lands’.
However, the Forest officials concerned rejected their claims over the “forest lands” and rebutted the charges against the forest staff terming them as “baseless.”
Both the aggrieved tribal farmers and the forest field staff filed complaints against each other at the local police station.
