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Police foil bid to quarry river sand

By Our Staff Reporter

PALAKKAD, APRIL 6. The police today fired two rounds in the air to foil an attempt by the `sand mafia' to forcibly take away 23 trucks that were seized by the police when the trucks were being used to illegally remove sand from the Bharathapuzha at Ongallor, near Pattambi, on Monday night.

Two policemen of the Pattambi station were injured and tension prevailed in the area.

The police arrested seven of the gang members who came from the Deshamangalam area in Thrissur with 30 trucks to transport sand quarried from the Bharathapuzha.

The local people informed the police about the massive sand-mining operation by the gang. When the local police objected to this, the gang attacked the policemen.

Sand-mining has been banned in the Bharathapuzha and its tributaries

in Palakkad and Thrissur districts from April 1, 2004.

The District Collector, Sanjeev Kaushik, told The Hindu that the ban had, so far, been successfully enforced in the district and that there were no incidents of sand-mining during the day. The Collector said that the Executive Magistrates (Revenue Divisional Officers and Tehsildars) were posted on night duty to take action against such attempts to extract sand under cover of night by organised gangs. He said that night patrolling by revenue and police officials had been intensified all along the river belt to enforce the ban on sand-mining.

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