North Khayerbari (Alipurduar): A group of farmers from a fringe village here has been patrolling the forests for free in their spare time to keep away timber smugglers. To protect the group from confrontation with the smugglers, the forest department today provided the 24 men with uniforms complete with a T-shirt, cap, name plate, baton, torch and bicycle. "The group will get Rs 2,000 per month for tiffin,' said Ashim Chaki, the range officer of Madarihat, which comes under Cooch Behar forest division. The farmers are part of the Islamabad Forest Protection Committee (FPC), which has 89 members. In 1991, the forest department had formed three FPCs, Islamabad being one of them, for the North Khayerbari beat to protect the trees from timber smugglers. The other two FPCs are North Khayerbari and Madhya Madarihat. However, the FPCs could do little and valuable teak continued to be smuggled out from the area, 61km from Alipurduar town. A few months ago, Chaki appealed to the members of the Islamabad FPC. Aijul Haque, one of the members of the FPC, took the initiative to explain to the others the importance of preserving trees. He even launched a door-to-door campaign, which worked and from April 2, the FPC members of Islamabad started patrolling the forest on foot. Not only that, within a few days, 15 women joined the group of 24 men. "I visited every household to convince them to give free service. Most of them are farmers and I told them to use their leisure time for this cause. Some of them asked me what they would get from the foresters and I reminded them how they use the forest land for cultivation and get potable drinking water from the department. In return they should also come forward to save the forest.' The FPC members then told Chaki about the problems they would face if they opposed the smugglers in "civil dresses'. "The range officer agreed to give them uniforms. We have formed four groups from the 24 men, who patrol the forest at least for three hours everyday. The women do the rounds during the day. But the groups do not enter the forests at any specific time for that will warn the smugglers,' said Haque. Chaki is hopeful that the two other FPCs will follow in the footsteps of Islamabad.