The Hindu : Front Page : Suspect in sandalwood smuggling held

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Sep 04, 2007
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Front Page

Front Page

Suspect in sandalwood smuggling held

Staff Reporter

Thiruvananthapuram: The State Forest Department on Monday arrested a 47-year-old man wanted in several sandalwood smuggling cases in Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

The suspect was identified as Ummar. He had been evading arrest since 2000, Forest Range Officer (Marayur) Dhanesh Kumar said.

Officials said Ummar profited from selling sandalwood trees felled from forest and revenue land in Kerala to owners of sandalwood distillation units in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Goa, and Puducherry. These oil-extraction units operate under the guise of perfume factories and had come up after the Kerala Government banned all such factories.

Some of these new factories are run by persons wanted for sandalwood theft in Kerala. Officials said they had set up the units under the cover of extracting oil from fragrant wood, mostly belonging to the Osyris family, imported from East Africa through Mumbai.

The distilled content of the imported ‘Tanzanian sandalwood,’ as it is locally known, is used as a cheap substitute for sandalwood oil.

It is also widely used to adulterate sandalwood oil, which is in high demand in West Asia and Europe for making cosmetics. ‘Tanzanian sandalwood’ costs an estimated Rs.1 lakh a tonne. The same quantity of sandalwood (Sandalum album) is valued at Rs.35 lakh. Sandalwood oil costs more than Rs.1 lakh a kg.