Poppy, from which heroin is made, is widely cultivated in Afghanistan

AHMEDABAD: International druglords are desperate to pump in prodigious quantities of heroin into India, officers of security and anti-smuggling agencies said. The assessment is spurred by two sizable seizures of heroin made recently off the Gujarat coast. The officers said the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has given a ballast of urgency to the drug mafia.
Officers of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), and the Gujarat Anti-terrorism squad (ATS) confirmed that concentrated efforts are being made to push heroin produced in Afghanistan into India. The officers said that the smugglers are likely to use the sea route via Iran.
The officers said that the druglords fear confiscation of the heroin stock by the Taliban. Apart from staggering financial losses, the druglords also face the prospect of summary execution if caught by the Taliban, the officers said. These factors are fuelling drug runs into India, the officers said.
Sources in the agencies said that the possibility of more heroin ships being caught in Indian waters cannot be ruled out. “The DRI found about 3,000kg of heroin at Mundra port and the investigation is underway,” a senior NCB officer said. “The heroin was smuggled from Afghanistan, which is the biggest producer of opium. The country has labs to process opium into heroin.”
Such huge stocks were never dispatched by the drug mafia, said the officer. “Their current push shows how desperate they are to dispose of their stock of heroin so that the Taliban don’t punish them or seize the contraband,” he said.
According to the United Nations, harvesting of opium provided about 12,000 jobs in Afghanistan in 2019. It is also believed that the drug trade accounted for up to 60% of the Taliban’s annual revenue.