Sandalwood seized, two held

TT, Siliguri, June 3: The officials of Sashastra Seema Bal seized around 1,000kg of red sandalwood worth Rs 10 crore from Jitupara village last night and arrested two persons.

"We had information that red sandalwood had been brought from south India and stored at Jitupara village. Our officers raided the area and seized 28 logs of red sandalwood weighing around 1,000kg. The red sandalwood costs around Rs 10 crore in the international grey market. During the raid one person was arrested," an SSB official said.

Siddiqui was arrested from his home at Jitupara.

Jitupara village is in Rajganj block of Jalpaiguri district, around 20km from here.

According to SSB sources, Siddiqui gave them information about Sayed Ibrahim, another person involved in the smuggling.

Sayed, who hails from Chennai, was arrested later at night from a hotel at Pradhannagar in Siliguri.

"Sayed is suspected to be one of the principal members of a sandalwood smuggling racket," an SSB source said.

Today, the SSB personnel brought the seized sandalwood and the duo to Pradhannagar police station in Siliguri. They were handed over to police.

"During investigation, we have found that the duo had plans to smuggle the red sandalwood to China via Bhutan. A case of smuggling has been started against them," an SSB official said.

Raid arrests

In other raids conducted across north Bengal and Bihar in the past 24 hours, SSB personnel have seized narcotics, medicines, cattle and teak logs. Five persons have been arrested.

The detective department of Siliguri metropolitan police seized 50kg of cannabis on Thursday. Bijoy Burman, from Fulbari, was arrested for carrying it to Cooch Behar.