Dr Arun Kumar Barthakur
The drug menace has spread alarmingly across Assam, reaching not only major urban centres but also towns and communities far removed from the state’s international and inter-state borders. The scale of the challenge is reflected in enforcement data. Assam registered 3,350 cases under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act in 2024, compared with 2,923 in 2023 and 2,907 in 2022. In 2018, the corresponding figure was only 478.
These figures require careful interpretation. A rise in registered cases may indicate both expansion of the illicit drug trade and intensified law-enforcement activity; it cannot, by itself, establish the extent of drug consumption. But it demonstrates that narcotics enforcement has become a major and continuing challenge for Assam.
The public-health dimension is equally serious. The National Survey on Extent and Pattern of Substance Use in India, conducted by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in collaboration with the National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre (NDDTC), AIIMS, estimated that about 1.9 lakh people in Assam needed help for cannabis-related problems and 17,466 people were injecting drugs. The latest national survey, initiated in 2025, is expected to provide updated state-and district-level estimates in 2027. Until then, the 2019 survey remains the principal nationally comparable population-level source.
A determined fight against this menace must confront a difficult question: How does a trafficking network continue to cross borders, penetrate local markets and reach towns far from the point of entry without repeated failures—or, where evidence establishes it, complicity—within the institutions responsible for stopping it?
The drug problem is therefore not merely about dealers, addicts and seizures. It is also about institutional accountability. Enforcement must move beyond arresting street-level peddlers to identifying trafficking networks, financiers, facilitators and institutional failures that allow the illicit trade to survive and repeatedly reconstitute itself.
Beyond the visible peddler
At the policing level, the first requirement is accountability and traceability. If narcotics repeatedly move through established corridors —from Myanmar through Manipur and Nagaland through Dimapur into Assam—and eventually reach relatively small towns such as Golaghat and Silchar, legitimate questions arise: Through which routes and networks are these consignments moving? Where are the points of failure? Why are not they detected earlier?
These questions should not automatically be construed as allegations against any particular official or institution. They are questions of public accountability arising whenever a serious criminal enterprise repeatedly succeeds in moving prohibited substances over considerable distances. Where credible evidence exists of officials turning a blind eye to known transit routes, selectively enforcing the law, leaking information about impending raids or accepting illicit payments, such conduct must be rigorously investigated. Individual corruption, if unchecked, can develop into a system of protection. Enforcement then risks becoming a revolving door: couriers and street-level dealers are arrested while financiers, organisers, facilitators and those shielding them remain beyond reach.
A successful anti-drug strategy must therefore distinguish between the visible face of the trade and its hidden architecture. The person carrying narcotics may be the easiest target. The persons financing consignments, arranging transportation, providing storage, recruiting distributors or laundering proceeds are harder to identify—but that is precisely where serious investigation must lead.
Every seizure should tell a larger story
Every significant seizure should trigger examination of the supply chain behind it. Where did the consignment originate? Who financed and transported it? Who was its intended recipient? Which intermediaries were involved? Were there earlier seizures or investigations connected with the same network? Which institutions were responsible for detecting its movement, and what explains any failure?
A seizure should therefore be treated not merely as the end of one operation, but as the beginning of a larger investigation. If a vehicle carrying narcotics is intercepted, investigation should not necessarily end with the driver and immediate recipient.
Investigators must seek those who hired the vehicle, arranged the journey, financed the drugs and controlled their distribution. This demands effective intelligence-sharing among agencies and jurisdictions. Drug trafficking does not respect administrative boundaries. A network originating outside Assam may pass through several states before reaching its destination; the enforcement response must be equally interconnected.
Follow the money
Financial investigation is critical because drug trafficking is ultimately driven by profit. Seizing narcotics without following the money trail leaves much of the criminal enterprise intact. Investigators should examine the financing of consignments, trafficking proceeds, suspicious transactions and assets acquired from illicit income. Where evidence permits, connections between narcotics proceeds and property, vehicles, businesses, bank accounts or other assets should be established.
The objective must be not merely to confiscate drugs but to dismantle the economic infrastructure that makes trafficking profitable. Assam has moved beyond isolated seizures to sustained enforcement. The next logical step is to ensure that enforcement increasingly targets the financial and organisational leadership of trafficking networks rather than concentrating primarily on their visible foot soldiers.
The intelligence and accountability question
Effective anti-drug operations depend heavily upon intelligence. Seizures after drugs have entered the market are necessary but inherently reactive. The greater objective must be to identify trafficking networks before consignments reach their destinations. Where repeated seizures reveal common routes, vehicles, locations, telephone contacts, financial transactions or intermediaries, those patterns should be analysed collectively rather than treated as unrelated cases. Criminal networks are often revealed through patterns rather than isolated incidents.
Persistent enforcement failures should consequently be examined institutionally. Investigations into organised narcotics trafficking must be insulated from improper influence; intelligence must be properly assessed and acted upon; and unexplained delays or failures should themselves become subjects of inquiry.
Where credible evidence establishes that a public official has facilitated, obstructed or knowingly enabled trafficking, accountability cannot end with transfer or suspension. At the same time, accountability must rest on evidence rather than suspicion. Transparent procedures are therefore necessary to distinguish operational error, inadequate resources, negligence and deliberate misconduct.
Such accountability strengthens rather than weakens professional policing by ensuring that honest officers are not discredited by the misconduct of a few.
Prosecution must complete the chain
A weak prosecution can undo a strong investigation. Narcotics cases must therefore be prepared with meticulous attention to evidence, documentation, forensic procedures and statutory requirements. Official figures raise an important question about the conversion of enforcement action into convictions. The Union government reported only two convictions in Assam in each of 2022, 2023 and 2024, against 2,907; 2,923 and 3,350 NDPS cases registered respectively.
These figures must be interpreted cautiously because convictions in a particular year do not necessarily relate to cases registered in that year; prosecutions may take years to conclude. Nevertheless, the disparity warrants scrutiny of the entire criminal-justice chain—from investigation and evidence collection to prosecution and trial. Success cannot therefore be measured by arrests and seizures alone. The larger objective must be the disruption and dismantling of organised trafficking networks.
Demand cannot be ignored
None of this diminishes the importance of prevention, treatment and rehabilitation. Addiction cannot be treated solely as a law-and-order problem. Those dependent on drugs require medical and psychological support and an opportunity to return to productive lives. Families, educational institutions, communities and civil society all have important roles. But demand reduction cannot succeed while organised supply networks continually replenish the market; nor can supply-side enforcement provide a lasting solution while institutional weaknesses remain unaddressed.
The fight must therefore operate simultaneously through prevention, treatment, intelligence-led policing, border surveillance, financial investigation, effective prosecution and institutional accountability.
The real test
Ultimately, the drug trade can be dismantled only when the networks sustaining it are dismantled. That requires independent and professional investigation, intelligence-led enforcement, financial scrutiny, transparent performance audits and prosecution reaching beyond visible intermediaries to those who finance, organise, facilitate, protect or profit from the illicit trade. The central question should no longer be merely, “How many arrests have been made?” It should also be: “Which trafficking networks have been dismantled, where did their money come from, who facilitated their operations, and where institutional failures occurred, who was held accountable?”
The real battle is not simply against the person standing at the street corner selling drugs. It is against the entire ecosystem that enables drugs to enter, move, circulate and generate profit. Until that ecosystem is disrupted, arrests of individual peddlers will remain necessary— but insufficient. Where there is a will, there is a way.
(Sr. Advocate, Bombay High Court & ex-special public prosecutor and special counsel, Government of Maharashtra)