The rise and rise of red sanders mafia

Seshachalam Hills, one of India’s richest biospheres which form the tip of the Eastern Ghats in Andhra Pradesh is considered a floristic hotspot for it houses many endemic and rare species including five gecko species, 12 species of lizards and 22 species of snakes.

However, it is red sanders (Pterocarpus santalinus), the tall trees which give one of the world’s finest and rarest woods, growing in these hills makes Seshachalam a hotspot of crime and a hub of mafia.

“It was in 1974 when my firstborn saw the light. Transporting a truckload of red sanders logs from Piler of the Annamayya district to the erstwhile Madras used to cost ₹270 a round trip, which included labour force and bribes at the local level and the inter-State border check posts,” recalls a 76-year-old carpenter from a remote village of Yerravaripalem mandal of Tirupati district in Andhra Pradesh.

“For a ton of logs, the price would be around ₹2,000. For each trip, I used to save around ₹1,000 plus at the rate of four trips a month. Like me, there were about a dozen people all over the Seshachalam hills,” he adds.

Andhra Pradesh Red Sanders Anti-Smuggling Task Force detect the strewn logs at a forest glade in Seshachalam Hills in Rajampeta division of Annamayya district.

Today, the statistics of the red sanders logs are sold at anywhere between ₹1 crore to ₹2 crore per tonne, based on the quality, in the international market.

Spread over 5,000 square kilometres across Kadapa, Annamayya, Tirupati and Chittoor districts, besides covering substantial forest cover in Nellore district in the State, the Seshachalam Hills is the first biosphere reserve in Andhra Pradesh identified under UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere programme in 2010.

The rich growth of red sanders here, however, began only after 1983 when the Forest Department, following the orders of then Chief Minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh, N.T. Rama Rao took up a massive afforestation programme in the region. Red sanders seeds were sprayed over the Rayalaseema region through helicopters. However, the seed germination at Seshachalam was the best owing to the hot and dry conditions which made it ideal climate for the trees to thrive.

From the 1980s onwards, the red sanders started attracting the international market, with major players coming from China.

A retired forest ranger recalled the different phases of red sander smuggling. “What began as a cottage industry is now a multi-crore global business. A few individuals used to sell the red sanders logs in small quantums in erstwhile Madras, intended for making toys and transportation to China and Southeast Asian countries. From the 1990s onwards, we do not know what happened exactly. The Chinese wanted to have the logs for themselves, and they had plans to manufacture toys and furniture themselves. They wanted huge quantities. Some middlemen in the timber industry in Tamil Nadu caught the pulse of the demand,” he said.

When there was a massive manhunt for forest brigand Veerappan in the thick forests of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala between 1990-2000, a large number of woodcutters who worked under him were left with no alternative source of livelihood. Now, these ‘meistries’ (organisers) from the north-western districts of Tamil Nadu lured the jobless youth to raid the Seshachalam ranges.

The precious trees, which were copiously present, were ruthlessly cut down and transported to Madras and Tuticorin ports. Those were the days when the officials, both from the Central and State governments, were not much aware of the red sanders.

During the time of Veerappan, it was only the white sandalwood that mattered. Between 2004 and 2014, the number of trespassers into the Seshachalam ranges from Tamil Nadu used to be a few hundred per day. The forest and police officials and also the media used to call the trespassers “woodcutters and coolies.”

Skilled Malai men excluisvely deployed

Later, the trespassers were promoted to the ranks of “red sanders smugglers.” Each woodcutter used to get ₹5,000 per log weighing around 50 kg. Most of these debt-ridden and impoverished men belonged to the Malai hill tribes inhabiting the forest regions of Tiruvannamalai, Salem, Dharmapuri and Villupuram districts of Tamil Nadu. They are illiterate and begin to work for red sanders smugglers from the age of 20.

The Malai men are preferred by the smugglers for the job as they are adapted to the Seshachalam hills and can jump and sprint fast in case of a police raid. The Task Force police have many times said that they were awestruck at the agility of these men, and that capturing them was not an easy task.

The Malai men are also resilient and can sustain for days with little food and liquor, making them the ideal smugglers of precious wood.

The so-called organisers started deploying the maximum number of workforce from Tamil Nadu districts, transporting them in specially arranged buses and also sending them in passenger trains. They would alight at Panapakam, Mungilipattu, and Chandragiri railway stations in Tirupati district and clandestinely enter the forest.

Previously, they used to carry axes and saw blades with them, but later they were readily supplied with the tools on their arrival. With time, the workforce enjoyed extra benefits such as liquor bottles and provisions to cook inside the forests during their long stays, ranging from two to three weeks.

“Their modus operandi was to cut down as many trees as possible, dress the logs and carry them to the road points. Vehicles from autos to trucks and lorries chugged the forest paths to collect the material and transport it to Chennai. With a sudden spurt in the activity, warehouses had come up in Hoskote and Katiganahalli areas of Bengaluru rural district,” says another forest official in Sri Venkateswara National Park range.

Interestingly, during all the turbulent years of red sanders smuggling from the Seshachalam ranges, three Ministers who held the portfolio of the Forests were from the undivided Chittoor district—Gali Muddukrishnama Naidu from Puttur, Bojjala Golapalakrishna Reddy from Srikalahasti and Peddireddi Ramachandra Reddy from Piler and later shifting to Punganur.

From 1995, the Chief Ministers of the undivided Andhra Pradesh were also from the red sanders-rich districts. Nara Chandrababu Naidu from Chandragiri (his native place in Tirupati district), Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy from Kadapa district, Nallari Kiran Kumar Reddy from Piler in Annamayya district and Y.S Jagan Mohan Reddy from Kadapa district.

Blood shed over red wood

On December 15, 2013, two forest officials of Tirupati Wildlife Circle—Deputy Range Officer Sridhar and Assistant Beat Officer David Kumar—were surrounded by a mob of 200 woodcutters deep inside the Seshachalam forests close to Tumburu Theertham waterbody on the Chittoor Kadapa border. The duo was brutally done to death with stones and axes, while another beat officer escaped with critical injuries.

Following this, the Andhra Pradesh government (after bifurcation) formed the AP Red Sanders Anti-Smuggling Task Force (APRSASTF) to give protection to forest officials while on patrol in the forests. It was this Task Force, which played a crucial role in nabbing Kollam Gangi Reddy, who faced allegations of red sanders smuggling and was one of the accused in the Alipiri bomb blast case of 2003 wherein Nara Chandrababu Naidu had a narrow escape. The then Task Force chief, M. Kantha Rao, a senior IPS officer who worked as the DIG and IG of the Task Force (2014-2019), had detected that Gangi Reddy had two passports.

The carnage of 2015

Kantha Rao said that during his tenure, hundreds of red sanders smuggling operatives were nabbed and remanded. “About half a dozen special teams were formed to conduct patrolling not only in Tirupati but all over the Rayalaseema districts, Nellore and Prakasam. In 2015, the Task Force made a stupendous breakthrough when a team rushed to Assam and prevented a 10-tonne consignment of red sanders logs from entering China. The goods were brought back to Tirupati. We had also made the information about red sanders public as to how many trees were cut down over years and how many trees were left the forests,” he says.

On April 7, 2015, as many as 20 woodcutters from Tamil Nadu, originally migrants from Wayanad in Kerala, were reportedly gunned down by the Task Force at Sachhinodi Banda (loosely translates to a boulder that belonged to the dead) point located deep inside the inhospitable terrain of Seshachalam hills near Tirupati.

The human rights groups then alleged that the woodcutters, all belonging to the Dalit community, were brutally shot at from point-blank range and their bodies were strewn all over the forest location. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) also registered a case on this.

Ever since this “carnage” of woodcutters, there has not occurred even a single casualty in the entire red sanders-rich region in the last nine years. After a lull of a few months, the woodcutters resumed invading the forest ranges.

“During these nine years, hundreds of trespassers were arrested and released on bail. Cutting red sanders has only turned into a picnic, coupled with economic benefit. The forest and police officials to date are afraid of even causing a minor injury to a woodcutter. Chases have almost disappeared. The trespassers are not afraid of arrests. After all, they know they would be convicted at the most for six months to one year if charges get proved against them – which is very difficult to establish,” said a police officer, who played a crucial role in undertaking a dozen inter-State operations in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and close to Bhutan border, and seizure of red sanders logs worth about ₹1,000 crore between 2014-2017.

There are critical observations that after the Jagan Mohan Reddy government came to power in 2019, the subject of red sanders smuggling slipped into oblivion. Allegations remained rife that the Task Force could not undertake a single inter-State operation during the period.

“Unlike the period before the Covid pandemic where 90% of the workforce was from Tamil Nadu districts, in recent years the locals of various villages of Rayalaseema districts have turned into smuggling operatives. Political leaders from top to bottom levels are facing serious allegations of their involvement in the red sanders smuggling. The cooperation and coordination between the forest and police departments have also been missed in the last decade. Due to the absence of any scientific mode of surveillance at the check posts, we don’t know what is happening there. In the last five years, there was not a single meeting of the inter-State police and forest officials to tackle the red sanders issue,” observed a retired police officer in Tirupati.

The Pushpa impact

When Allu Arjun-starrer Pushpa – The Rise was released in December 2021, after the Covid pandemic, it was a mad rush at the theatres. The hero’s striking dialogue—Thaggedheh Le (Will not bend)—caught the attention of the youth all over India and mesmerized even the big personalities of Bollywood.

“Pushpa director Sukumar and his team visited our office (in Tirupati) during the planning of the film. We took them to various locations in the Seshachalam and shared information about the modules and modus operandi of the smugglers, the aspects of interrogation and investigation. The movie could create a sea of awareness about the bad element in red sanders smuggling,” said former Task Force chief Kantha Rao.

Ironically, a majority of the officials in the enforcement agencies observed that Pushpa had directly contributed to the entry of more youth into the contraband forest trade. Several youths involved in the red sanders errands started growing their beard leaving their hair unkempt and repeating the verbal and physical mannerisms of the hero, which included the viral Pushpa style of walking.

In this context, the recent observation of Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan (who also holds the portfolio of Forests) that “Around 40 years ago, a hero was someone who safeguards the forest. And now, the hero is someone who cuts away the forest and is a smuggler,” has raised many an eyebrow.

Serving as a sum up, a forest ranger in Annamayya district, considered a huge fan of Pawan Kalyan, says: “Red sanders is a socio-economic-political subject. Unless the government comes up with a scientific formula to counter the environmental damage, the police and forest officials are helpless. Just, we are waiting for Pusha-The Rule.” (Sequel to Pushpa- The Rise is expected to be released in December 2024).