The rise and rise of red sanders mafia Premium

Seshachalam Hills in Andhra Pradesh, rich in endemic species, faces red sanders smuggling and mafia activities.

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.

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.