Emboldened by the halfhearted action of the Pulwama administration, which has now turned into a full-fledged inaction, the boulder mafia(bajri mafia), is extracting truck and tractor loads from Chandri Nalla in Tral town of the district.
Residents told CNS that the dirty work starts in the wee hours of the mornings and continues till dusk, while no one from the authorities is there to stop this illegal excavation.
According to locals, lockdown has proved a blessing in disguise for the mafia, with people locked inside their homes, scores of tractors and trucks start excavation work in the mornings, making life hell for the locals, due to noise erupting from the engines of these machines.
A local resident Mohammad Farooq said, “We had brought the matter into the knowledge of the administration, after which a team of revenue officers visited the locations, where extraction of boulders from Chandri Nalla is taking place.”
“But once they left, the illegal extraction began again at a renewed scale after a lull of three days, with added speed”, he said.
Another resident Mohammad Ramzan said, “The mafia has devised a new strategy to continue the illegal activity, without being noticed by the police, guarding the main roads.”
“They are now moving their vehicles though a different route, via Aali Gund, where there is no presence of police”, he said adding that if there was deployment of police personnel on that route also, perhaps the continuation of illegal activity could have stopped.
Locals requested the district administration to take the cognizance of the criminal activity going on at a large scale and take an action against the mafia and put an end to the vandalization of resources and ecology and also save them from the noise pollution created erupting from the tractors and trucks, which are illegally ferrying the boulders from the Nallah, from dawn to dusk, without being stopped by anyone.
Despite repeated attempts to contact Deputy Commissioner Pulwama Dr. Raghav Lanker, for his comment on the issue, he could not be accessed as his phone said that the number was not was not valid. (CNS)
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