Hyderabad: SOT arrests six persons for smuggling sand

Hyderabad: The Special Operations Team (SOT) of LB Nagar zone, along with Ghatkesar police on Sunday night raided on the outskirts of Malyala village of Mulugu district and arrested six persons for smuggling sand illegally. Moreover, the gang was also involved in fabricating waybills or transit passes allegedly in nexus with some outsourcing employees of the Telangana State Mineral Development Corporation (TSMDC).

The accused were identified as K Rajashekar, B Kiran Kumar, P Naveen Kumar, K Mallikarjun, M Bhargav and G Laxman.

Mahesh Bhagwat, Rachakonda police commissioner said that the existing procedure to transport the sand is to get an online sand order receipt from the official websites Sand Sales Management and Monitoring System, which the customer has to produce before the on-duty Sand Reach officer at the sand reach is concerned. The officer has to verify the receipt online and allow the vehicle inside the sand reach. After loading the sand in such vehicles, the officer collects the order receipt and issues a transit pass to that vehicle clearly mentioning the delivery address with the approximate delivery time.

He further said, "Usually, the TSMDC deputes one of their cadres as Sand Reach assistants who will be present at the sand reach, monitor the process of lifting the sand to the permitted vehicles and submit the details to the competent authority. But, by following the guidelines of TSMDC, the contractors were not getting huge profits as they expected. So they began searching for alternative sources for getting easy money by transporting sand illegally."

"Few days ago, two persons Madhukar and Ramakrishna were caught for illegally transporting the sand, based on their confession, the other suspects were arrested in this case. This gang conspired to illegally transport sand by forging fake transit passes in consultation with the on duty employees of TSMDC. But on gaining suspicion we acted and after receiving a confirmed tip-off we raided the unit and arrested all the accused persons under section 420, 468, 471, 329 of IPC and have remanded them to judicial custody," stated the officer.