Four sandalwood trees axed in Kovai, two smuggled out

Coimbatore: Sandalwood smugglers have struck again – this time at Ramanathapuram. Four sandalwood trees were axed at a farmland in Sungam early Sunday morning, said the police. This is the sixth such incident this year.

According to the Ramanathapuram police, an unidentified gang chopped four sandalwood trees, eight to 10 years old, in the small hours of Sunday.While they had managed to smuggle two of the trunks, they had left behind the other two probably because they had not come prepared to transport all the four trunks at one go, sources observed.

Sreenivasan, the owner of a one acre land in Sungam, had gone for a walk in the morning and when he got back, he noticed that the trees had been chopped. He immediately alerted the police.