Seven persons from the Jawadimalai region of Vellore and Tiruvannamalai districts of Tamil Nadu were injured when they tried to jump from a lorry that was being chased by personnel of the Andra Pradesh Red Sanders Task Force near Oteru village in the Tiruchanur police limits, five km from Tirupati, in the early hours of Monday.
All the wounded, including one with a head injury, were admitted to the SVRR Hospital at Tirupati. About 50 others travelling in the lorry escaped from the spot under the cover of darkness.
Reportedly acting on a tip-off that a lorry carrying a large number of smugglers was on its way from the Jawadimalai area to cut red sanders trees from the Seshachalam hills, three teams of the Task Force had spanned the Tirupati-Chennai national highway to intercept the vehicle.
Around 2.00 a.m., the lorry gave the slip to the task force at Anjeramma Kona by ramming the barricades and crossing the toll plaza. Again, the vehicle hit the barricades near Gajulamandyam and entered the Renigunta-Tirupati bypass road. At the Oteru village point, however, it had to slow down at a road block caused by a heavy vehicle that had broken down. Seeing the Task Force chasing them along with the police from the Tiruchanur circle, the woodcutters jumped from the moving lorry. While seven of them fell on the road, all the others fled the scene.
The Tiruchanur police present at the road block mistook the unconscious woodcutters as having died and informed the Task Force IG M. Kantha Rao. When the police tried to shift them to the roadside to clear traffic, it was detected that the seven persons were in a highly inebriated condition. They were taken to the SVRR Hospital, where they were declared out of danger, but with moderate injuries, including the one with the head injury.
They were identified as Doraiswamy (41), M. Ravi, Govinda Swamy, Chakravathi, Karthik and Tirupati (all 28), and Vedanayagam (40).
The Task Force team seized the lorry, along with a huge stock of provisions meant for cooking, and axes and machetes. The Tiruchanur police have registered a case.
