The heroin trail through India

According to the Police Narcotics Division of Sri Lanka, about 50 kg of heroin is seized annually as it enters the country. Sri Lankan police admit that the island is being used as a major transit point for the drug. Its journey begins in Afghanistan and Pakistan and it traverses the length of India before entering Sri Lanka, from where it heads for Western Europe.quot;Earlier, traffickers used the overland Balkan route to Europe. But with the unrest in that region, the Tamil Nadu-Sri Lanka route has become more attractive,quot; says C.L. Ratnayake, director of Sri Lanka8217;s Police Narcotics Division.

Ratnayake says that traffickers chose the most quot;tedious and non-obviousquot; routes to their final destination in order to avoid detection. The larger consignments come by sea from the Tamil Nadu coast, particularly the area around Tuticorin, and land on Sri Lanka8217;s north-western coast. While there have been regular seizures of the drug as itenters Sri Lanka, there have been few hauls at the exit points, and none in the last year.

Indian police sources said that besides members of the Indian underworld, a few Sri Lankans living in India, with connections to the underworld on the island, are also in the trade. Narcotics police have under their surveillance some Chennai-based Sri Lankans who control a network of couriers who carry the drugs into Sri Lanka.

quot;The deals and transactions are still made in Delhi and Bombay, after which the drugs flow southward,quot; said an Indian police officer. Earlier, the consignments were transported overland across India. But increasingly, this is done through domestic Indian flights on which security is less stringent.

Drug trafficking has created strong links between the Indian and Sri Lankan underworld, a fact that became evident after the recent arrest of heroin boss Kuda Noor by the Sri Lankan Crime Detection Bureau. Indian police said reverberations of the arrest were felt across the straits, in TamilNadu8217;s underworld.

The history of smuggling by sea across the Palk Straits meant that the networks were already in place. The common ethnicity and the huge influx into India of Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka after 1983 seems to have facilitated the business. Inevitably, there is suspicion that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam LTTE, the group fighting for a separate homeland in north-eastern Sri Lanka, is responsible for the upsurge of narcotics-related activity in this region.

The group seems to have a bottomless treasury and is almost as well-equipped as the Sri Lankan amy. But it has been extremely difficult to pin anything as dirty as drugs on the avowedly puritanical LTTE. At a recent international conference on narco-terrorism held in Colombo, a Canadian police officer described the link between the LTTE and the narcotics trade as quot;hazyquot; at best. quot;It is the most logical assumption to make that the LTTE is involved in narcotics, but there is no evidence,quot; an Indian police officer told thisnewspaper.

On January 7 Sriram, 36, was shot outside a farmhouse in West Delhi. A Sri Lankan, he had been running a drugs racket. While the killers remain untraced, three Sri Lankan associates of Sriram were arrested, who revealed that Sriram was an quot;LTTE-trained commandoquot;. Later, underworld boss Ashwin Naik, who was caught trying to flee India across the Bangladesh border, corroborated the story.

Delhi Police then announced they had evidence in their possession that could, for the quot;first timequot;, connect the LTTE with the illegal trade in narcotics. They pointed to the fact that Sriram had once supplied an Uzi to Ashwin Naik8217;s gangster brother Amar, as evidence that the LTTE was peddling drugs for arms.

However, this was not the first time that the LTTE-drugs link had surfaced. Since 1984, soon after many Sri Lankan Tamils left their country to seek asylum in the West, several have been arrested the world over for drug-running. The arrested men claimed connections with many of the militant groups thathad mushroomed in Sri Lanka at that time.

In a few cases, police said there was evidence to suggest they were members of the LTTE. But there never was independent evidence to establish the link conclusively, or to show how the LTTE benefited from these operations.

Secondly, it has never been proved that any of the Tamils arrested so far for drug-running were affiliated with the LTTE. In only two instances has the link come close to being established: in the mid-eighties, a western journalist who contacted the LTTE in a European capital posing as a drug baron wrote that it had responded positively.

Interpol recently revealed that the LTTE8217;s Paris quot;in-chargequot; till some time ago, Velumailyum Manoharan alias Mano, had a heroin conviction. The suspicion that he was acting for the LTTE arose after a report that Velupillai Prabhakaran had authorised a monthly payment to his family while he served time.

In Sriram8217;s case, Tamil Nadu police have no record of him being a member of any Tamil militant outfit. Hearrived in India in 1988, one of the thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils who took refuge in Tamil Nadu at that time.

Sources among former militant groups in Sri Lanka harbour little doubt that the group profits from narcotics-related activities. But to establish its direct involvement in the traffic is next to impossible.

quot;Those involved in the racket may not even be aware that they are working for the LTTE,quot; said one former militant. It is believed that in order to maintain its image of fierce puritanism, the LTTE lets others do the dirty work, demanding only a share of the profits.

In all these years of pursuing the LTTE, the Sri Lankan security forces too have found no evidence to directly associate it with the narcotics business. It is suspected that the drugs trade could be linked to the human smuggling racket in Sri Lanka, through which hundreds of Sri Lankan Tamils are sent illegally to the West every year. Sriram8217;s first venture in India was in fact a false passport business.

Sundaralingam, a23-year-old Jaffna youth who was taken into custody in Colombo in a drug bust on a tip-off provided by two Indians held for bringing heroin into Sri Lanka from Chennai was also said to be running an quot;agencyquot;, Tamil shorthand for immigration racket.

Police said they were looking for LTTE links. However, in this case as in others, everything that could connect the LTTE to narcotics is still in the realm of suspicion and, given the dark complexity of the drug chain, may forever remain so.