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India’s vanishing Sandalwood: How Veerappan and the state strangled a fragrant heritage
According to the Sandalwood Development Committee Report, India’s sandalwood stock has collapsed by more than 80% since the 1950s.
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R Suryamurthy - Fri, 17, Oct 2025
- 00:08 EDT
- 5
Cover of Akshay Kumar's 'Veerappan, Chasing the Brigand' / Wikimedia commons
There were two bandits in India’s sandalwood story. One carried a rifle in the forests of Sathyamangalam. The other wielded red tape in the corridors of power. Veerappan may have smuggled sandalwood out by the truckload, but the real looter was the system that turned the world’s most prized tree into a bureaucratic hostage.
A new Sandalwood Development Committee Report by Niti Aayog has laid bare what every forester already knew and every policymaker ignored: India’s sacred tree has been bled dry not by smugglers alone, but by the state’s own suffocating embrace.
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