The cat-and-mouse game between the police and sand-miners of Neyyar has become live once again, with the former cracking down on mining activities in the river with renewed vigour over the last couple of weeks.
The crackdown, led by N. Jayakumar, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Neyyattinkara, has acquired a different shade this time, with the action not restricted to just registering of cases or seizure of the boats used for smuggling sand. The police have destroyed about 15 boats by crushing them under earthmovers with the intention of dealing a financial blow to the activity. The price of each boat, most of them fibre boats, ranged from Rs.50,000 to Rs.1 lakh, said Mr. Jayakumar.
“The boats are not registered and no one turned up to claim them. And this is the best deterrent action we can take now to curb the sand-mining activity in the region,” the DYSP told The Hindu .
While nine fibre boats, seized on November 7 from near Pozhiyoor, were crushed the same day, another five boats that were seized late on Friday were destroyed on Saturday. The crackdown, supervised by Mr. Jayakumar and led by G. Ujjual Kumar, Circle Inspector, Poovar, and Chandrakumar, Circle Inspector, Parassala, will continue in the coming days as well.
The police, who have been collecting information on mining using local informers and policemen in mufti as well, found that the boats, filled with precious river sand from Pozhikkara and the backwaters of Poovar in the night, had facilities to let water into the boats and thus keep them submerged under water to escape public view. Once it was made sure that there was no police presence in the area, the boats would be taken out and waiting trucks would take away the sand at exorbitant prices.
A similar crackdown was last carried out in 2011-2012, when the tragic drowning of a labourer, after getting trapped in a deep underwater trench allegedly caused by sand-mining in the river, spurred the police into conducting raids, seizing boats and lorries, and registering around 490 cases in four months.
