The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Coimbatore News : Making hay on sandalwood

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jul 24, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore

Making hay on sandalwood

Coimbatore city witnessed a series of sandalwood tree thefts over the last few months, which took the police and Forest Department by surprise.

During the last few years, the gang using a battery-operated and silencer-fitted saw had felled and smuggled sandalwood from various Government offices and private premises. Fully-grown sandalwood trees were smuggled from the Corporation Park at Selvapuram, Bharathi Park, Gandhi Park, Corporation zonal office on Huzur Road, TNEB office premises in Tatabad, Sivananda Colony, private houses in Ram Nagar, R.S. Puram, Saibaba Colony and a church premises in Uppilipalayam.

To cap it, the culprits managed to cut and smuggle a couple of trees from the Institute of Forest Genetics and Tree Breeding (IFGTB) in the city. In one such instance, the city police, who were alerted by a neighbour, reached the spot on time and prevented the smuggling attempt. But the culprits abandoned the jeep and managed to escape under the cover of darkness.

Though the police and forest officials had been trying to nab the accused, the theft of this "Royal tree" continues unabated. Sandalwood is a scheduled timber (besides rosewood and teak) under the purview of the Indian Forest Act and the Tamil Nadu Forest Act. The forest officials, who had experience in protecting sandalwood in the reserve forest areas, kept tab on seven sandalwood oil factories along the Tamil Nadu - Kerala border.

Owing to shortage of wood and inability to smuggle through Coimbatore because of visible policing and stepped up vigil along the inter-State borders, some factories had shifted their operations to Pondicherry. The oil factories found buying sandalwood from these smugglers to be easy and profitable rather than the cumbersome procedure of buying this precious timber from the Forest Department depots at Tirupattur, Salem and Sathyamangalam. Showing this officially procured stock on its accounts, these oil factories thrive largely on procuring sandalwood from the smugglers. The rules state that a person cannot possess more than 5 kg of sandalwood without valid permit.

There are clearly laid out conditions and permits for possession and transport of sandalwood. Hence, the auction by State sandalwood depots is often used to account for the smuggled one.

With the depletion of sandalwood wealth in Salem and Tirupattur belts, the smugglers once flourished on the sandalwood that was left out in Marayoor near Munnar in Kerala. With the smuggling from these forests via Pollachi becoming difficult, the gangs have started laying hands on the scattered sandalwood in private and government office premises in the city.

As sandalwood was smuggled across the border in buses and head loads, detection is almost impossible. Baffled at the increasing threat to the "Royal wood", the Forest Department investigated taking the jeep abandoned by the culprits as a vital clue. The Divisional Forest Officer, P. Durairasu, constituted special police teams led by Range Officer, M. Vijayaraghavan. They managed to track a three-member gang, which was trying to smuggle a small quantity of sandalwood across Anaikatti.

Preliminary investigations revealed that oil factories in Kerala engaged brokers to smuggle sandalwood, who, in turn, employed gangs. They engaged local youths to identify trees and the ideal time for the operation. From the first week of August all the four special squads of the Forest Department would be keeping vigil, officials said.

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