The long shadow of narco-terrorism

Kashmir and Punjab, which have seen large drug seizures, may have to contend with a surge in smuggling with the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan

Wedged between the two largest areas of illicit opium production — the Golden Crescent and the Golden Triangle — India has long figured as an important transit point in the international drug trade.

Along the border with Pakistan, Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab are particularly vulnerable, with sophisticated technology like drones being increasingly used to smuggle drugs.

The Union Territory of J&K and Punjab have seen large narcotic seizures in recent years, particularly of high-value drugs like heroin.

This rising narcotic trade is the latest threat in Jammu & Kashmir, which has seen over three decades of cross-border terror.

After the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, there is now concern that there could be a surge in drug smuggling. A report by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction in 2018, estimated that the Taliban earned 60 per cent of its revenue from the drug trade.

The latest UN World Drug Report estimated that in 2020, Afghanistan had 2.24 lakh hectares area under opium cultivation, representing over 75 per cent of illicit opium cultivation worldwide.

It is this opium that makes its way into India, via Pakistan.

A senior police officer in Kashmir said that after the serious crackdown by law enforcement agencies against hawala operators in recent years, Pakistani agencies used cross-LoC trade and narcotics to fund terrorism and unrest in the Valley.

In 2019, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had cited “funneling of illegal weapons, narcotics and fake currency” as reasons for shutting the cross-LoC trade.

“When cross LoC trade was shut down, narco-trade seems to have become the exclusive route to finance terrorism,” the officer revealed.

Some of the people arrested in the drug trade seem to be linked to terror outfits like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen.

Though no definite money trail linking the drug trade and terrorist outfits has been established in the court of law so far, investigation into some cases by J&K police and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) indicate that the money generated from heroin smuggling is being utilised to finance terrorist activities.

In April last year, the NIA arrested a bank manager, Afaq Ahmad Wani, from Handwara in north Kashmir.

Around 21 kg of heroin and over Rs 1.35 crore cash was seized from the drug syndicate he was part of. The total cache was said to be well over Rs 200 crore. J&K police had said this drug network was working for the LeT.

Police raids also uncovered a cash counting machine — usually used in banks — which indicates the huge amount of money changing hands in this narco-terror network.

According to the MHA data, in 2015, a total of 72.07 kg of heroin was seized in J&K.

In 2019, data from the J&K police shows over that 200 kg of heroin was seized. Last year, 152 kg of heroin and 49 kg of brown sugar were confiscated from different parts of the Union Territory.

In 2015, law-enforcement agencies had arrested 708 people involved in drug trafficking in J&K, which rose to 1,672 people in 2020.

Read | Jammu and Kashmir ANTF recovers 1,000 kg poppy straw

Drug abuse

As early as July 2018, the then J&K police chief Sesh Pal Vaid had termed drugs a “bigger challenge” than terrorism in the region. His successor, Dilbagh Singh, echoed more or less the same sentiment.

“Narcotics is the biggest challenge after terrorism. It keeps alive terrorism (by financing it) and second, it destroys youth,” Singh said.

Gauging the gravity of the problem, the J&K government set up Anti Narcotics Task Force (ANTF) last year to tackle the emerging threat of narco-terrorism in the region. But despite sustained campaigns, heroin abuse has reached alarming levels in the Valley.

The extent of the problem can be gauged from admissions at the drug de-addiction centre (DDC) of the Government Medical college in Srinagar. Over 95 per cent of the 6,234 patients admitted here during the lockdown (April 2020 to June 2021) were heroin users.

“The number of people seeking treatment for heroin abuse is just the tip of the iceberg. Easy availability of heroin is a major reason for the steep rise in such cases in the last two or three years,” said Dr Yasir Rather, in-charge of the DDC at Srinagar.

Dr Arshid Hussain, a professor of psychiatry at GMC Srinagar, is among the first doctors in Kashmir to work on drug addiction.

He said even when the subcontinent was dealing with an opioid boom in the 1980s, Kashmir had largely stayed drug-free.

According to him, before 2015, there were hardly any heroin users in the state. “Medicinal opioids, cannabis, shoe polish, and correction fluids were used as drugs and most of the addicts then had a dark past, were affected by violence and belonged to a particular socio-economic background,” Dr Hussain told DH.

But cases of heroin addiction among youth, especially those from well-off families, skyrocketed since 2018.

“Now, there are educated people, including children of government officials, who are heroin addicts,” he said.

Read | Drug menace could get worse, with Taliban ruling Afghanistan

Effect on youth

One such case is that of Bilal Ahmad (name changed), a young professional from Pulwama, who worked for a multinational company in Gurugram.

Ahmad’s tryst with drugs started in 2013, when he was pursuing an MBA degree in Delhi. He was introduced to heroin in 2018 when he returned home to Kashmir on a two-week holiday.

“Some of my childhood friends had started abusing heroin and they gave me the first two doses free of cost. First time I inhaled it and the second time it was injected into my veins,” Ahmad, who was recently brought to a de-addiction centre in Srinagar by his parents, told DH.

By 2019, Ahmad had become a regular user and lost his job in the process. He said that is when he received a call from an old acquaintance, who had joined the militants.

“He offered me Rs 2 lakh for delivering one kg of heroin in Shopian. I agreed,” Ahmad claimed.

“At the address where I delivered the packet, I was given Rs 18 lakh, which I gave to my militant friend. He then gave me Rs 2 lakh as a reward,” Ahmad said. “After a few weeks, the militant was killed in an encounter with security forces.”

Ahmad’s parents grew suspicious after the Covid-19 lockdown in March last year. Still, he continued using heroin till last month, when his parents finally got him admitted at the de-addiction centre at Srinagar.

Twenty-seven-year-old Manzoor Dar (name changed) from North Kashmir’s Baramulla district has a similar story. He was introduced to medicinal opioids while pursuing a B.Tech course in a private college in Punjab in 2014.

Since both his parents were middle-rung government officers, Dar says money was never an issue.

“I would make different excuses to my parents to get more money. Then, one day in September 2017, one of my friends gave me a dose of heroin. While I inhaled it, I felt I was in heaven,” said Dar, who is accompanied by his mother at the de-addiction centre.

Dar too had landed a job at an MNC in Mumbai but had to quit after a year due to his drug use.

When asked about where he was getting the heroin, Dar said, “I used to travel to border areas of Baramulla on my bike where it is easily available. They are cheaper there compared to towns and cities.”

Dar added that in his neighbourhood alone, there were at least 20 youth who were consuming heroin.

Read | Sidhu questions Punjab govt's 'inaction' on drug smugglers

Punjab’s narcotics trade

In Punjab, most of the narcotic smuggling takes place along the state’s 545-km-long border with Pakistan with the active collusion of locals.

In addition to drugs smuggled from across the border, the influx of heroin from Jammu & Kashmir, as evident in recent drug bust cases, is also causing concern among Punjab’s enforcement agencies and the police. And there has been little improvement after the change of government in the state.

Under the Congress, which rode to power with a promise to eradicate the drug trade, heroin seizures rose to 2,089 kg, with 46,273 cases being registered.

During the 51-month period until 2017 when the last Akali Dal-BJP combine government was in power, the state saw seizures of 1,683 kg of heroin with 46,273 cases being registered under the NDPS Act.

In Gujarat, officials in security agencies and the state police say the state has always been considered a transit point for smuggling drugs from Pakistan and Afghanistan.

This was also indicated by the recent record seizure of 3,000 kg of heroin at the Mundra port in the state by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence. This is Gujarat’s largest drug bust since 2017, when 1,500 kg of heroin was
seized by the coast guard.

Officials said that from Gujarat, the consignments are transported to various parts of the country, from where they are smuggled to Europe and elsewhere.

Officials also said that the volume of smuggling through sea routes (Afghanistan to Bandar Abbas port in Iran to Gujarat coast) has increased over the last couple of years due to heightened security at the international border between India and Pakistan following terror attacks.

“The smugglers are trying hard but even the sea route may not be viable for them as they have lost so much manpower. The smugglers may not be worried about their consignments getting seized. But it is the number of their men who are frequently getting arrested, which we think, could be hitting them hard,” said an ATS official.

A senior police officer in Kashmir said heroin was coming into J&K from Pakistan and Afghanistan “as drug dealers have a network spread from the Line of Control to the mainland, which is spreading across India too”.

(With inputs from Gautam Dheer in Chandigarh and Satish Jha in Ahmedabad)