Indo-Pak border: Report warns of heroin smuggling

What is disturbing is the trend of India being increasingly used as a “major transit country and a destination for drug trafficking”. The INCB report has referred to cross-border smuggling, saying this was relatively easy due to the “porous” borders between India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal. Indian heroin is being smuggled into Bangladesh, by road, train and sea routes. Some of the drug finds its way into Bangladesh through Myammar.

The INCB report, released here on Wednesday, referred to recent seizures that indicated that courier services were being used for drug trafficking in India. The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) stopped two parcels with over a kg of heroin each in a courier office in Delhi in July last year. One of them was meant to be sent to Canada and the other to South Africa.

Cannabis and heroin are being increasingly trafficked and abused in South Asia. “West African traffickers have targeted South Asian countries, mainly India, for cocaine trafficking,” the INCB said. According to the report, South American cocaine is trafficked to India “in small quantities”. This is exchanged for South-West Asian heroin bound for Europe and North America.

The INCB has estimated a 17 per cent rise in illicit opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan in 2007, saying it currently accounts for 93 per cent of the global illicit market for opiates. The board has already sounded an alarm on the ready availability in Afghanistan of acetic nhydride, the chemical used in the illicit manufacture of heroin.