Sandalwood smugglers arrested

Coimbatore: The RS Puram police seized 30kg of sandalwood logs from five sandalwood smugglers on Thursday.
The arrested people were identified as S Selvakumar, 39, of Kembanaickenpalayam in Erode, C Senthil, 38, of Weavers Colony at Thirumuruganpoondi in Tirupur, H Pistor, 29, of Patna in Bihar, S Himayun, 70, of Thalavadi in Erode and his son H Mohammed Ali Jinnah, 30.
Preliminary inquiry revealed that Selvakumar, Senthil and Pistor chopped a sandalwood tree from the property of M Bharathi of RS Puram on January 6 around 11pm.
“The trio used to roam on two motorcycles to find sandalwood trees and steal them at night. They chopped the tree into small pieces, transported them to Erode and sold them to Himayun and his son for 1,500/ kg,” police inspector Ananthajothi said.
The smugglers had stolen sandalwood trees from RS Puram, Thudiyalur, Periyanaickenpalayam and Vadavalli, assistant commissioner of police N Ravikumar said. “They had sold sandalwood logs to Himayun 50 times. We seized 30kg of sandalwood logs, two motorcycles, axe, saw, machete and 99,000 from them.”
Himayun sold sandalwood logs to some people in Mysuru, city police commissioner V Balakrishnan said.