Aditya Rangroo
History has established that drug trade whether legal or illegal wields the key to power and has been even part of foreign policy of many dictators, imperial powers and kingdoms in order to overthrow the rival kingdoms without much bloodshed.
In present India, Punjab is in a serious grip of drug abuse, owing to the state’s crippling economy, low agricultural production, worsening soil health and massive farm debt. Youths in the state of Punjab have been the prime target of the illegal drug lords who to greater extent have succeeded in injecting the drug addiction in the State.
Drug trafficking in Punjab is not a recent phenomenon; it dates back to 1980s when it was increasingly smuggled to India after the long-established Balkan route was compromised during the Iran-Iraq war. A powerful network of gold-bar smugglers was already laid across the India-Pakistan border during that time. The route was further exploited during the intense violent independent Sikh militant movement in the mid of 1980s gripped the state and it the ISI backed drug lords to penetrate the state with the contraband.
Currently, at least 75 percent of youths in Punjab have allegedly succumbed to drug addiction. This is a dangerous sign for the state which has a reputation of producing legendary freedom fighters and accounted for large number of its youths in the army. Known for its rich agricultural prosperity, Punjab is now plagued by a ruthless drug menace, which is clamping down its society, politics and economy.
However, the root cause of widespread drug trafficking in India goes back to the US invasion of Afghanistan and their ineffective attempts to curb the opium menace which resulted in growing opium trade through Pakistan and India. Today, Afghanistan is the world’s largest opium producer with its southern region Helmand alone accounting for 46 percent of total drug production. The bigger picture, however, is even threatening; the Golden Crescent (Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan), which produces the world’s largest opium, has established India as their base to smuggle high-end synthetic drugs to western black markets.
The drug cultivation usually is performed across the border of India and the required chemicals to process the poppy and heroin are trafficked from India. These heroin and other drug chemicals are later trafficked back to India which are known as South-West Asian (SWA) drugs. Such is the demand and profit margin coming from these drugs that 1 kg of heroin, which is priced between Rs 4-6 lakhs in India, fetches nearly Rs 5 crore in overseas black market.
In recent times, such has been the drug rise in Punjab that the state comprised nearly half of all the cases registered in India under the Narcotic Drug and Psychotropic Substance Act (NDPS) in 2013. The NDPS figures clearly ring the warning clarion to the state authorities, as corroborated by Neelam Deo, director of Mumbai based foreign policy think tank Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations that the Soviet incursion of Afghanistan during 1980s created thousands of drug addicts in Karachi and something same can be seen across Amritsar too.
Professor Ranvinder Singh Sandhu at Guru Nanak Dev University cites easy availability of narcotics in Punjab as the factor behind growing drug menace in the state. Some of the narcotics include synthetic drugs like smack, brown sugar, heroin, amphetamines, ice, raw opium-based narcotics such as afeem (a black tar-like opium derivative), bhukki (poppy pod), doda (minced poppy husk) and and a range of prescription drugs such like alprazolam, diazepam (generally identified as xanax and valium), pethidine, buprenorphine, fortwin among others.
He further outlines that nearly 46 percent drug addicts purchase drugs from local chemists, making them the key supplier. Many of these chemists shop, especially in remote areas of Punjab, are unlicensed and sell drugs without any prescription.
For drug lords, Punjab is the easy target, as it shares a 553 km border with Pakistan, which is used as a gateway to traffic drugs into India. These drug lords employ new techniques to smuggle drugs, where drugs are tied up in bundles and inserted via fence in rubber tubes at the border area. Once the drugs are successfully smuggled from Lahore to Amritsar, then they are spread across tourists destinations like New Delhi, Mumbai, Goa and Manali.
The more alarming scenario appears for India from the joint report by the United Nations on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and Afghanistan Ministry of Counter Narcotics, which shows that opium cultivation has expanded over 224,000 hectares and an opium production has touched close to 6400 tons in Afghanistan, which is smuggled to India via Pakistan. Considering these figures, one can anticipate the degree of catastrophic effect of drug abuse in India if the large chunk of these opium continues to sneak through border areas.
Border Security Force (BSF) recently has submitted a report to the Union Home Ministry on the drug trafficking in Punjab from beyond the borders. The detailed report suggests an increase in drug smuggling across the border. In 2011, the BSF had seized heroin worth 67 kg, while in 2012; the seizure was elevated to 288 kg. Shockingly, these figures touched 313 kg and 324 kg in 2013 and 2014 respectively. It further stated that there are numerous couriers in the border regions of Punjab which are being paid Rs 60,000 per kg, and well-network groups ensure the drug consignments are safely cleared and smuggled.
Furthermore, to avoid the police and army surveillance, these well-established groups use sophisticated modus operandi to smuggle the drugs across the border. The modus operandi includes the use of Pakistani SIM cards by Indian drug smugglers and Indian SIM cards used by Pakistani drug lords to dodge the intelligence surveillance.
The other factors which are responsible for drug smuggling in the state of Punjab besides well-knit networks, are lack of well-concreted roads at the Indo-Pak borders. Due to the lack of proper roads, drug lords find it convenient to transfer large-scale drug consignment by digging out the tunnels under the fence, which are received by their kingpins on the other side of the fence.
In this background, it is evident that Pakistan is clearly targeting Punjab, besides Kashmir to carry out their sinister anti-India doctrine. ISI backed non-State actors in Pakistan are aiming to destabilize the commercial and social parameters of Punjab. With a proximity to Golden Crescent and Golden Triangle, India has become a convenient destination for drug trade. ISI and international criminal Dawood Ibrahim are running this trade from this region. On the streets of India, the drug smuggling is operated by ‘D Company’.
Moreover major source of funds of Taliban, Jamat’ud’Dawah, Lashkar-e-Toiba and Hizbul Mujahideen comes from the opium trade black market. Other factors which funds these terrorist outfits are colossal narcotics trade within India. It may sound as a routine, but the dismantling of drug trade in India should be the topmost priority, especially in the backdrop of two major developments. First, the rise of Islamic State (IS) terrorist outfit and the involvement of Indian youths in the outfit. The second important development can be traced from Ayman Al Zawahri, chief of Al Qaeda, who announced that the outfit will soon establish its Indian branch.
Clearly the State functionaries including police, army and intelligence has not been effective in curbing the widespread drug mayhem in Punjab. Unfortunately, the authorities are sort of seeing the drug menace as a state crisis only, whereas it should be seen as a national crisis with one clear policy. They have not been responsive to the rising drug menace, as emphasized by the former Director General of Punjab Police K P S Gill that drug menace is the problem of entire state, not only Punjab. The steps taken by the State Government in response to drug menace is inadequate.
In order to crack down on drug menace, more focus should be on rural areas where drug abuse is much higher than the cities.
The other initiative which Government should actively pursue is to launch highly effective awareness campaigns and rehabilitation centers across the state. For many drug addicts, it may be a social taboo to go to the rehabilitation centers, as they will be look down. This should be given the topmost priority as the drug addicts are slowly alienating from the society which eventually leads to more drug smuggling. The civil society also needs to come forward in order to curb this menace.
The army should also strengthen their surveillance at the border areas in order to prevent the drug smuggling. A sizeable drug expert should be constituted whose focus and responsibility should be solely to nail the drug kingpins.
If not dealt on time, the growing drug menace in Punjab will turn the entire state into the den of large-scale crime market including safe haven for terrorism.
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