Will the real killers of young IPS officer Narendra Kumar Singh who are perpetuating illegal mining in Madhya Pradesh be taken to task? It seems unlikely given the lackadaisical record of the Central and the state government’s in arresting the political mafia behind these crimes
In 2011, when the additional collector Yashwant Sonawane was murdered in Nashik by the oil mafia, the police went public in disclosing that the mafia has links with the Gulf countries and were importing mud containing oil from Gulf countries.
Fuel tankers operating from Mumbai to Pune stop en route when the mafia empties one third of the tankers and refills them with adulterated oil extracted from this imported mud. Despite Sonawane’s death, the racket in kerosene and diesel continues to flourish.
The forest and mining mafia too is so strong that in UP alone, bureaucrats in the ministry of forest and environment point out that over 113 forest officials have been killed in the last two decades.
The Indian Forest Service officer Sanjay Chaturvedi, who tried to halt the illegal mining taking place in the Aravalli hills in Haryana was suspended by the Haryana chief minister and had to be reinstalled by a presidential order.
Rajasthan suffers from widespread illegal mining and despite complaints by several bureaucrats, no action has been taken by the political establishment. Delhi’s NCR region is witness o a flourishing sand mining racket but no action has been taken against the don who runs it.
The situation is worse in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh where the mafia runs a parallel economy with more than seven lakh tones of coal being illegally extracted every year. The mining mafia has a presence along all the major and minor rivers of the country. Swami Nigamananda Saraswati died after a four month fast in protest against sand mining on the banks of the Ganga. His death was a warning that if reckless sand mining continued, this would have a disastrous effect on the health of all our rivers.
Lack of will at the top has seen massive destruction of inviolate hills, rivers and forests all of which is in violation of the Forest Conservation Act and the Environment Protection Act.