Once brimming with lush green forests strewn over a vast area, Baramulla in North Kashmir is witnessing an unabated loot of its green gold for years together without any fear of law. The mafia, timber smugglers, forest land encroachers are all hand in glove with the forest officials and even police, according to local residents living near forest divisions. Trees are felled outrageously wilfully and on large scale, in presence of forest officials who turn mute spectators and hence acting in a malfeasance manner by violating their official responsibility.
With this rate of felling of trees in a massive way and smuggling and transporting the same usually during the dead of night, not because they are fearful of being caught but because of there being less traffic on roads, the smugglers manage to speed up their illegal and unlawfully acquired consignment reach different destinations. They easily “manage” to jump Police nakas, if any found en-route. If this loot of irretrievable jungle wealth is not stopped with an iron hand, Baramulla jungles, whatever is left of them now, will soon turn into barren chunks of uneven areas of land.
Is there any administration worth the name, especially law enforcing agencies, to stop hundreds of horses laden with thieved timber logs seen ascending from the upper reaches of the forest areas in broad daylight in connivance with those, whose avowed duty is to check, stop and penalise the smugglers and thieves? They do not know what does felling of a tree mean to the environment and the ecology on the whole and ultimately being all detrimental to the very survival of the man.
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