Two persons were booked in Karnataka's Kodagu district for trying to dump 15 sacks of plastic waste in a reserve forest area in the district on Monday, January 30. The waste was allegedly brought there from neighbouring Kerala in loaded trucks. The driver and cleaner of the truck, which was transporting the waste, were booked after the vehicle was seized near the Makutta checkpost near the Kerala-Karnataka border. Penchalayya and Sheena, natives of Nellore in Andhra Pradesh, were arrested under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 and produced before the Virajpet JMFC court, which remanded them to judicial custody for 14 days.
Karnataka Biodiversity Board Chairman Ravi Kalappa, who visited the site, told TNM that the
forest rangers were alert and working to preserve the cleanliness of the forest areas in the Karnataka-Kerala border. "We won't let anyone dirty our state, our forest rangers work hard on maintaining the area," he said. He added that in the forest area, plastic bottles and waste from tourists and vegetable vendors were found.
Activists and NGOs in Kodagu have complained about medical waste dumped in the forests of Kodagu districts, allegedly from vehicles that enter the district from Kerala, in the past year.
In 2020, TNM had reported how waste from Kerala was being dumped in different parts of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. At the time, Kerala had only one bio medical waste treatment plant, Indian Medical Association Goes Eco-friendly (IMAGE), which functioned in Puthussery panchayat in Palakkad. Another biomedical waste treatment plant commissioned in Brahmapuram is yet to be established, according to The Hindu. The issue of inter-state dumping of waste has persisted over the years, however, police end up arresting the truck or lorry drivers and not their employers.
Read: Medical waste from Kerala continues to be dumped in TN: Why authorities are worried