NAGPUR: Two hammers used as forest dept seals missing from Seminary Hills office

NAGPUR: In an unusual case, two hammers have gone missing from the Seminary Hills forest range office. The foresters use these hammers to mark felled trees and also finished wood, called sawn timber.
A forest hammer is similar to a normal hammer. The handle is usually made of wood and the head is made of metal. One of the sides of the head is designed like a blade or hatchet or like a flat, convex, or round-shaped path, while the the other side has a seal.
Sources said these hammers were ‘stolen’ from Lakadganj-I and Lakadganj-II round offices in East Nagpur. There are at least 150 sawmills in the Lakadganj area.
In Lakadganj-I there was one hammer, which went missing on June 11. In Lakadganj-II, there were two hammers of which one went missing on June 17. Presently, work is being carried out by only one hammer. Even as a police complaint was lodged by round officer SL Pandey on June 11, there is no trace of both missing hammers yet.
Surprisingly, even after 10 days, Seminary Hills RFO Sarika Admane-Vairagade and the staff under her have kept the theft under wraps from senior officials. RFO Vairagade did not respond to TOI’s calls.
Talking to TOI, Bharat Singh Hada, deputy conservator of forests (DyCF), Nagpur, said, “This matter has not been put up before me. The procedure to issue new hammers requires them to surrender the old one, and then only a new one is issued. In cases of theft, an FIR has to be registered.”
Round officer Pandey had lodged a police complaint on June 11 with Lakadganj police station. According to him, a forest guard was riding pillion on a two-wheeler with the employee of a timber trader to Kalamna to mark hammer on sawn timber to be transported to Hinganghat. In between, the bag in which the hammer was kept appears to have fallen off somewhere after a jerk on a pothole. Another hammer with Lakadganj-II was also lost the same way.
How both hammers were lost due to the same reason is a mystery. Insiders say, “There seems to be something fishy as both hammers cannot be misplaced in the same manner just days apart. Many times forest staff also hand over the hammers to employees of timber traders for marking. The marking procedure is crucial as this is the basis for issuing transit pass (TP) to the parties.”
Even as an alert has been issued to all forest check-posts, the hammers have not been found. There is every possibility that these hammers can be misused for converting illegal timber into legal either by the staff or outsiders, who know how the forest department works. They can also issue fake TPs by printing them, said sources.
“Interestingly, even as the matter is considered serious in nature, no action has been taken against the forest staff. The matter is being hushed up by range forest officials,” said sources.