The Forest Department is taking efforts to trace the origin of around one tonne of sandalwood which was seized by the police while being smuggled from Kerala to Tamil Nadu via Coimbatore last week.
While the Tamil Nadu Forest Department is expanding its investigation to Kerala, as the whopping 1,051 kg consignment reportedly came from Malappuram district, the Kerala Forest Department has also launched a parallel investigation to find out the trails of the biggest sandalwood smuggling in recent times.
An official said that a special squad of the Kerala Forest Department visited Coimbatore and collected details of the case registered by the Madukkarai forest range of the Coimbatore Forest Division. The Kerala team interacted with Assistant Conservator of Forests M. Senthil Kumar and other officials, who are part of the investigation.