Two men arrested for sand theft

TRICHY: Two men were arrested by the police for

sand theft

in

Trichy

on Saturday. According to the police, the accused had initially tried to flee by attempting to run over a four-wheeler on a village administrative officer (VAO), who caught them during an inspection.

The accused were identified as P Santhosh, 41, from Valadi and R Mohanraj, 24, from Pudukkudi.

VAO of Devathanam and Chinthamani, Kumaravel, conducted a surprise inspection for sand theft near Chathiram bus stand around 8 am. While he stopped a mini-truck in which Santhosh and Mohanraj were travelling – for inspection, he discovered half a unit of illegally-mined sand in the truck.

But in order to flee from the spot, Santhosh and Mohanraj allegedly tried to run over the truck on the VAO. Kumaravel evaded the attempt and with the help of police, soon nabbed the accused and seized the looted sand. Officials suspect the two mined the sand from the banks of Kudamurutti river

Kumaravel filed a complaint with Fort Station and the police registered a case regarding the incident and arrested Santhosh and Mohanraj. The police said that Santhosh already had a pending case against him for illegal sand mining.

Post questioning, the duo was remanded under judicial custody.