Bareilly's 'Veerappans' finally burn fingers

LUCKNOW: Timber thieves felled a fully grown sandalwood tree, cut it up and sold it for a song in Bareilly. Not very surprising. But what came as a jolt is that the sapling was planted by the first President of India, Dr Rajendra Prasad in 1960. It also came as a shocker for the culprits, because they were rounded up for what they may have perceived as an innocuous act of borrowing from Mother nature.Following a complaint in this connection made last November by Ram Ratan Sharma and Ram Surat Upadhaya — supervisors of a cremation ground where the tree stood — with Kila police, Section 397 of the Indian Penal Code was clamped on the offenders, then unknown. Police sources said that after initial investigations, four persons, Dilawar Shah, Zulfikar, Harish, and Bablu were arrested on December 12. Eventually the main culprit Pappu was arrested on January 7. Pappu has revealed that the gang was involved in illegal felling of trees in the region. The sandalwood tree was felled on November 25 but the police swung into action in mid-December after several petitions were filed by citizens including teachers of Ruhelkhand University. The miscreants made another blunder, by trying to sell the logs before the main gates of the university. In all 13 kg of logs were recovered, sources said. One of the arrested has said that a "sadhu" who sat at the cremation ground was behind the felling of the precious tree. The tree which could have fetched around Rs 1 lakh, was sold for a few thousands of rupees, sources added. The planting of the sandalwood sapling was one of the last acts of Dr Rajendra Prasad before he laid down the highest office of the nation. Interestingly, the forest department, which came to know of the felling of the tree, did not take any action and chose to ignore the episode in a casual manner, sources said.