The Chittoor police on Thursday booked notorious red sanders smuggler Markondan Lakshmanan (38) from Kolkata under the Preventive Detention (PD) Act following orders from the District Collector, and shifted him from Chittoor district jail to Kadapa Central Jail. He was arrested by the Nindra police in recent months, and is currently under judicial custody.
Lakshmanan, a native of Mannady Street in Chennai, settled in Kolkata a decade ago, having been in the red sanders smuggling since 1998. He possessed godowns in Chennai, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Manipur. Establishing links with local smugglers in Chittoor and Kadapa districts, Lakshmanan was smuggling the red sanders logs to Nepal, Dubai, Myanmar and China. Earlier, he was booked under the PD Act in 2014, and he came out on bail in August 2015, and resumed his operations. According to the police, he had smuggled out over 60 tonnes of logs overseas so far. He was wanted in 31 cases in Chittoor and Kadapa.
Meanwhile, based on confession of Lakshmanan that he had been in a live-in relationship with Sangeetha Chatterjee, a model-turned-red sanders smuggler, of Kolkata since a couple of years, the police launched an inter-State operation early in May to get Sangeetha to Chittoor, but the efforts did not materialise, as she obtained interim bail from a designated court in Kolkata. She also did not turn up in Chittoor court on May 18 as was directed by the Kolkata court. Latest, she has to appear before Chittoor court on May 30 in accordance with the extended interim bail order by the Kolkata court. Police during their operation detected bank transactions to the tune of several hundreds of crores from Sangeetha's accounts.
Lakshmanan reportedly smuggled out over 60 tonnes of logs overseas so far
