Post News Network
Jaleswar, Feb 24: The district administration led by the collector along with two platoons of police personnel started a crackdown on sand mafia from West Bengal Tuesday.
The mafia have been illegally quarrying sand at 20 places in the river bed of Subarnarekha under Dakshina Praharajpur panchayat of Raibania.
Nine sand lifting sump machines worth over Rs 1 crore were damaged while one excavator was seized.
Due to large-scale illegal sand lifting, the state government was losing crores of rupees as revenue.
The local administration along with police had raided some sand quarries and had damaged machines of the sand mafia February 14. Angry villagers had then also drowned two motorised boats used for sand transportation on the water route.
Later, the sand mafia along with the administrative officials from West Bengal had pitched red flags in the sand quarry areas, marking as their territory.
However, Balasore administration along with police visited the place and removed the red flags February 19. They had then seized an excavator and a tractor while three persons were arrested. But a full-scale raid could not be carried out because of the absence of sufficient number of police personnel.
Taking serious note of the issue, additional chief secretary Taradatt had sought two platoons of police force from DGP Sanjib Marik.
On instruction from the superintendent of police, Jaleswar tehsildar (in-charge) and BDO along with police raided the sand quarries at Praharajpur and took them into their possession.
Collector Sanatan Mallick himself supervised the crackdown on the illegal sand quarries. Sub-collector Idramani Nayak, Baliapal tehsildar (magistrate) Pratap Chandra Beura, SDPO Satyaranjan Mallick, Raibania IIC Gopal Chandara Singh and several other senior police officials were present.
The locals have welcomed the steps against the sand mafia.
Meanwhile, Dantun IIC, West Bengal, Akhil Chandra Malaka, talked to the district collector about the issue. He later told the Kharagpur ASP Abhisekh that all illegal sand quarries were well inside the territory of Orissa.
Illegal sand lifting, which has been going on for a long time, and it is believed to have caused the change of course of the river, apart from causing a huge revenue loss to the state.
