Drug trafficking has been a major problem in India's northeast, but this menace now threatens to engulf new areas. What is worse, not only are drugs from the Golden triangle coming into India, some of these routes are now being used to smuggle narcotics out of India. Thus, it has now become a two-way route for illegal trade in drugs.

This growing drug traffic on the West Bengal-Bangladesh border has caused concern the official Indian agencies deployed on the border. Murshidabad and Bongaon in south Bengal had become convenient routes for drug trafficking. While much of the drugs produced in Uttar Pradesh was going to Bangladesh, some drugs processed in the Golden Triangle area of Myanmar was believed to be entering India via Bangladesh. This year the Border Security Force has seized nearly 10 kilograms of heroin and brown sugar, so far passing from India to Bangladesh. Besides, six kilograms of opium was also seized in 2004.

A disconcerting development is the cultivation of poppy in a few Murshidabad villages close to the border. As poppy cultivation is new to this area, the cultivators are calling in "experts" from other areas to process the poppy. These experts are locally called "doctors".

In the northeast, drug lords of the infamous Golden Triangle in the virtually unadministered region at the tri-junction of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, have shown an increasing tendency to smuggle brown sugar and heroin through north-east India to the rest of the country, as well as to the outside world via Indian and Bangladeshi ports and airports. In July this year Jorhat police in Assam seized 550 gms of Thai-manufactured heroin. This was followed by another seizure by the Nagaland police. On August 24, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the Assam police seized about 945 gm of heroin hidden in a plastic packet with a Thai label.

The absence of an institutionalized intelligence framework within the police forces of vulnerable states like Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur to tackle the well-coordinated narcotics trafficking into the region from the Golden Triangle has been a boon for the thriving racket.

The Assam Police believes that narcotics, particularly heroin and brown sugar, manufactured by the drug lords in the Golden Triangle, where high-grade poppy seeds are produced in abundance, find their way out through Tamu (Myanmar)-Moreh (Manipur)-Nagaland-Assam, Myanmar-Mizoram-Assam, Mizoram-Barak Valley (Assam)-Bangladesh routes. In the process, Guwahati, the gateway to the north-east, has become the primary transit point for drug trafficking.

In August this year, police seized a total of 1.5 kg of super-refined heroin, worth Rs 1.5 crore in the international market, in two hauls in the heart of Guwahati. Four couriers, all young men from Manipur, were arrested. Widespread unemployment in the area helps the drug barons to recruit these carriers. Young unemployed boys and girls from the northeastern states, particularly from Manipur and Mizoram bordering Myanmar, are lured into the drug trafficking racket with payments of hefty sums of money and "drugs for free".

The region is paying a social price for this illegal trade of drugs. The younger generation is facing the problem of high incidence of AIDS and deaths through drug abuse. While Manipur has been identified as a high-incidence zone for AIDS in the country, Mizoram has lost over 800 young lives to drug abuse in the last decade.

The Assam police believes that there is no market for costly heroin and brown sugar in the region, since few people can afford them, but smugglers are bent on converting the region into a major route for trafficking, cashing in on the lack of proper coordination between the police forces.

Though drug trafficking has been creating problems for the last 10-12 years, the authorities have not taken any stringent action. Drug peddlers have taken advantage of this situation and are running their business without much hindrance. Insurgency in the same region has slowed down the anti-smuggling operations to a large extent. Last year, India and Myanmar had come to an agreement to share intelligence and contain the drug trafficking problem. However, considering the gravity of the situation, it appears that the enforcement agencies of both countries have not been able to achieve the desired results as drug trafficking is on the rise in northeast India. There is an urgent need to set up a well-coordinated inter-state police intelligence network in the region to tackle this menace.