28 September 2018 10:04 am
Two illicit loggers who happened to be buddies of an influential politico were recently caught red-handed transporting timber of two kinds of protected trees from a reserved forest in the “Kandiya” area in Digamadulla.
The two loggers managed to contact the powerful politico soon and the latter went into action to help his buddies.
Later, the law enforcing agents who arrested the two illicit loggers and the truck loaded with valuable timber found it difficult to hush up the case but were not able to disregard the politico’s request either.
So, they charged the duo for the lesser offence of felling ipil-ipil and gliricidia from the forest reserve, they say.