Guwahati, July 27 : The Nagaland forest department and the customs department have locked horns over the seizure of 42 timber-laden wagons of a goods train here on Saturday.
The customs sleuths had seized the wagons at the railway freight terminal here on suspicion that the consignment, worth around Rs 80 crore, was possibly being smuggled from Myanmar. The consignment was being transported from Dimapur to Nangloi in west Delhi.
Conservator of forests, Nagaland, K. Hocto Sema, said the timber consignment detained in Guwahati was of “legal origin”, duly approved by the Union ministry of environment and forests in accordance with the Supreme Court guidelines.
Sema alleged that the customs officials had tampered with the sealed wagons without giving any intimation to the forest department.
“The Nagaland forest department through railways has received official communication about the detained wagons loaded with timber from Nagaland. We are yet to receive any official report of seizure from any agency,” the conservator of forests said.
Contrary to Sema’s statement, a customs official based here, requesting anonymity, said they had detained the wagons on July 8, based on a specific tip-off that the consignment or parts of it, was illegally smuggled from Myanmar.
The customs official said they had sent several reminders to Nagaland forest department, giving them 15 days’ time to produce relevant documents but did not get any response as a result of which the consignment was finally seized on July 24.
Out of the 42 wagons seized, 14 contained teak.
“Since not much teak is grown in Nagaland, we have reasons to believe that the consignment was smuggled from Myanmar, whose teak is world famous,” he said.
“We have seized the consignment under the Customs Act as the train guard could not furnish any documents regarding the wood contained in the wagons. Moreover, the Nagaland forest department is yet to produce the documents like original transit passes and measurement list,” he said.
“Now the onus is on the Nagaland forest department to prove that the timber was from trees grown in the non-forest areas of the state,” he added.
