Hyderabad: Sand smuggling racket busted; 6 held

HYDERABAD: Rachakonda's special operation team in Telangana capital Hyderabad busted an sand smuggling racket and arrested six persons. Police have seized Rs 3.2 lakh cash along with other incriminating evidence.
According to police, the offenders were found smuggling sand from a sand reach in Malyala village of Mulugu district using fake transit passes with the help of outsourcing employees of the Telangana State Mineral Development Corporation.
The accused arrested on Sunday were identified as Bonu Kiran Kumar, a businessman from West Godavari district of AP, Kammachichu Rajashekar, supervisor of the sand reach in Malyala village, Manthena Bhargav and Gaddam Laxman, both supervisor at sand reach in Malyala village and P Naveen Kumar, Konda Mallikarjun, both outsourcing employees of TSMDC. All from Mulugu district.
In June, two offenders, Bachupally Madhukar and Kore Ramakrishna, both from Nalgonda district were caught for illegally transporting sand. According to police, after their confession, six others were arrested on Sunday.
In the existing procedure to transport the sand, one has to get the online sand order receipt approved by the Sand Sales Management and Monitoring System (SSMMS). The customer has to produce it to the on-duty Sand Reach officer at the sand reach concerned who will allow the vehicle inside after verifying the receipt online.
"After loading the sand in the vehicle, the sand reach officer collects the order receipt and issues a transit pass to that vehicle mentioning the delivery address and approximate delivery time. However, the contractors were not getting huge profits as they expected, following the guidelines," said Rachakonda CP, Mahesh Bhagwat.
In a day, 30 lorries were illegally loading sand, while, so far close to 500 lorries were allowed to illegal transport sand from Malyala sand reach, added the officer.
Police seized net cash along with fake transit pass, billing rolls designed and prepared by the TSMDCL, portable printer used for printing the fake among other material from their possession and booked them for cheating, criminal conspiracy, forgery and theft case.