Despite the continued action by the joint team of police and mining department, illegal mining and transportation of sand has not stopped in the district. Deputy Commissioner, Neha Arora had asked the officials of the mining department on, December 21 to immediately stop illegal sand extraction and had instructed for  strict action against the people involved.

These instructions did not have any effect on the sand mafia and the trade of illegal sand was running.

Superintendent of Police, Garhwa, Md Arshi said that the police are getting information of sand evacuation and transportation regularly. In view of this, police deployment has been done on various sand ghats. He said that the police personnel should act honestly otherwise they will be taken action.

Sources revealed that the sand mafia are connected to the interstate sand mafia and their reach is very high. By taking sand from the district they sell it in big cities of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra and make a lot of money.

“Even after repeated action, against these illegal sand mining could not prevented them because only small fish have been caught in the hands of police, big fish are still far away from the police,” said a real estate businessman.

Earlier, following the instructions of DC and SP, the Department of Mining and Police, started Joint campaign against sand mafia and during their 10 days campaign one Poklan machine, 7 JCB machine, 38 trucks and 6 trackers were seized. FIRs were lodged against 37 people and 19 people were arrested and sent to jail.

Apart from this, the illegal storage of about 20,000 cubic feet of sand is also sealed. All the action has been taken in the night. Earlier, the mining department had also taken strict action in the last six months regarding illegal mining and transportation in the district. Meanwhile, the department had caught 150 illegal vehicles and handed over to the concerned police station. Out of which 63 FIRs were lodged against the vehicle operators.