Suhail Bhat
SHOPIAN, Feb 12: The forests in South Kashmir’s Shopian district have witnessed large scale felling of pines and firs for last few decades rendering the huge tracks of forests denuded with thousands of stumps witness to the loot of green gold.
Local residents said the areas like Sangarwani, Tharun Kellar and Yarwan in the district had once dense forests and now there are traces of forests in the form of half cut tree trunks.
“The smugglers of this green gold usually operate during night hours to ferry the logs. They have specially trained horses for the task said a local and claimed that the forest pickets are only for the namesake. “The Forest Protection force is hardly seen patrolling the area,” he added.
Abdul Basit Wani, a local resident, accused the forest officials of being hand-in-glove with the smugglers. “This (loot) did not happen overnight but was systematically done with the help of officials who were supposed to protect it, over the last decade,” he alleged.
“They are operating like a full-fledged mafia and officials take their share of money every month. The actually aide and assist the smugglers, otherwise how is possible for the smugglers to smuggle forest wood in broad day light,” said Wani, while making strong allegations against the concerned officials.
Even though the forest officials claimed that they have reduced the smuggling in Shopian but said the movement of smugglers cannot be curbed.
“Smuggling has always been there but I think for last couple of years we have reduced the smuggling to almost 90 percent. This year we have seized almost fifty horses and 20,000 feet forest wood . We have registered 20-30 FIRs against the smugglers,” Nawab Ahmad, Forest Ranger at Shopian , told Excelsior.
Ahmad refuted the allegation of locals levelled against the forest officials and said: “The reason why people are complaining is that we have recently launched a drive to recover the forest land from them.”
Another official also refuted the claims of any nexus with smugglers and said that two separate wings including Forest Protection Force and Territorial Force who conduct regular day and night patrols have been commissioned for the job to control the menace of smuggling. “Our control room is at Pulwama. They can conduct a surprise visit anytime and can catch us anytime. So there is no chance of any negligence from our part,” he said.
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