R B Jagadish
Daijiworld Media Network - Karkala (SP)

Karkala, Dec 31: A case stands registered in Hebri range forest office relating to unauthorized cutting down of high value trees in Belanje forest region within Kuchchoor gram panchayat in the taluk located within its jurisdiction. It is said that some unauthorized persons, who transported these trees after converting the trees into logs, have hidden them inside stone quarries and buried them beneath the earth. The forest officials have launched an operation since the last four days to locate these logs and take action against the guilty.

The forest officials claim they have strong reasons to suspect that trees were stolen from the forest region. The operation continued on Monday December 30 too. In a complaint registered in the forest office, president of Anti Kasturirangan Report Implementation Committee, Amruth Kumar Shetty, and Naveen Shetty from Belanje have been named as accused.

After collecting reliable information about this theft, and under instructions from divisional forest officer, Kundapur, the forest officials had begun the operation on Friday. Teams led by range forest officer here, Satish N, raided several places including Belanje and Kopparagundi, and traced illegally stored logs,and transported them to the Seetanadi forest office premises. As the officials suspect that more logs are concealed under the earth, they have continued with the search operation.

It is gathered that the forest office has received directions to dismiss staff employed for patrolling these forest areas for dereliction of duty,as the concerned had failed to detect and stop this large scale theft, considering the extent of loss. A number of people involved with theft of trees and concealing them in the form of logs, planks, firewood etc have been questioned, and based on information collected from them, searches are being conducted.

Kundapur deputy forest conservator Ravishankar, assistant forest conservator Kishore Kumar, and other high ranking officials have rushed to Hebri to take stock of the situation and guide the operations.

The long silence of the department on these activities since several years, and the fact that people's representatives have remained mum over felling of large number of trees in the guise of road development has given rise to suspicion about their role in the minds of the general public.