)
Twenty red sanders smugglers were killed in an encounter with the Special Task Force (STF) police in the wee-hours of Tuesday in the Seshachalam hill ranges near Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh (AP), according to state police.
The face-off with police officials saw the highest death toll in a single encounter involving smuggling of red sanders from the state. Some of the security and forest personnel were also stated to have sustained injuries in the encounter, which took place at two places — Cheekatikona and Eethagunta, near Tirupati.
Chief minister Chandrababu Naidu convened an emergency meeting today with the ministers and officials directing them to provide immediate medical care to the injured. He also directed state director general of police, JV Ramudu, to hand over the bodies of the smugglers to their respective families after postmortem.
The incident happened when STF members, during their combing operations, noticed more than 100 men, including those from the neighbouring Tamil Nadu, felling down the trees in the high ranges.
“When the STF policemen ordered them to surrender, some of them started hurling stones, sickles and fire arms. This led the police to resort to firing resulting in the death of 20 of them and injuring some of our men. Several smugglers managed to escape,” said RP Thakur, additional DGP (law and order).
He said most of the smugglers were from Tamil Nadu, coming from Salem and Tiruvannamalai, and they keep entering the state regularly. There have been similar incidents last year in which red sanders smugglers had attacked police and forest personnel, resulting in death of some of the smugglers.
Speaking to Business Standard, Parakala Prabhakar, adviser (communications) to AP government, said, “regional feeling should not be attached to people involved in looting the valuable commodity. It is not a one-off incident. In the past two years, the state had lost 4-5 forest officers while facing the smugglers.”
He also said due to increased patrolling, incidence of smuggling had dropped in the last 8-9 months. More than 1,000 smugglers were locked up in various jails in the state, and over 6,000 vehicles had been seized from them, he added.
