Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI: Several far-flung sar areas in the state have started poppy (afim) cultivation, let alone other illegal activities like timber smuggling, running illegal sawmills, browbeating, and the like for which they are infamous.
The Goalpara district administration destroyed poppy cultivation in a 40-bigha area in Sonari Sar last week. The Golapara administration did destroy large poppy cultivations in Shialmari in 2021 and 2023. Poppy cultivation in sar areas first came to light in 2010 in the Magurmari Sar in the Darrang district. After that, even as the district administrations kept destroying poppy cultivations from time to time, the cultivation continued unabated because of the profit involved in this venture.
According to sources, a racket from outside the state takes advantage of the remoteness and inaccessibility of sars in the state to grow poppies, in connivance with a section of sar dwellers. The racket supplies everything, including poppy seeds and other materials, to the local sar dwellers.
According to a section of sar dwellers, people residing in sar areas are ignorant of what poppy is exactly about. “They think it to be cultivation of floral plants (floriculture), and some leaders of the sar areas take this advantage to use the local people as labourers. If the district administrations keep an eye on the people of the racket who come from outside to see the poppy cultivation and the people who shelter them, their whereabouts can be detected,” Ashraf Ali, a sar dweller, said.
The Brahmaputra basin has around 3,500 sars with around 2,251 villages in Assam. The number of sars and villages may vary now as there has not been a survey of sars in the state for several years.
A forest official said, “Many sars in the state are infamous for timber smuggling. Smugglers fell trees and carry the timber to the sars through the Brahmaputra. Many of the sars have portable sawmills for sawing the smuggled timber. The Forest Department dismantled several illegal sawmills in sars in the Kamrup, Goalpara, and Dhubri districts. The forest officials face security problems in conducting raids in such areas, besides the communication bottlenecks. Forest people going to the sars without adequate security personnel is fraught with their life and limbs.”
According to official sources, the information gap about illegal activities in several sars is a major problem. When the administrations receive concrete information on illegalities, they go to the sites fully equipped. However, they cannot access many sars because of the difficult terrain.
Also read: Assam: Barpeta Police Destroy 305 Quintals of Poppy Cultivation
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