DIMAPUR — The first ever Regional Conference of Heads of Anti-Narcotics Task Forces (ANTFs) of eight north-eastern states and West Bengal began on Thursday at Rhododendron Hall, Police Complex, Chümoukedima, with a strong call for enhanced inter-state coordination, accountability, and intelligence-led enforcement to counter the escalating drug crisis in the region.

Nagaland Director General of Police (DGP) Rupin Sharma, delivering the keynote address, described the Northeast as the “pivot of India’s fight against drugs” and warned that the region was facing a “sustained and systematic assault” on public health. With its long and porous 1,643 km border with Myanmar and proximity to the infamous Golden Triangle, Sharma said the area had become increasingly vulnerable to drug trafficking and use.

Sharma pointed out that the Indo-Myanmar border remains largely unfenced, enabling unchecked crossings by traffickers and couriers who exploit the Free Movement Regime (FMR) and ethnic ties Across the border. This porous movement, he said, allows traffickers to operate under the guise of legitimate travel and trade.

Nexus of threat

According to Sharma, investigations and operational intelligence suggest that illicit drug trade in the Northeast is feeding a “nexus of organised crime, insurgency, and narco-terrorism.” He claimed that Nagaland alone has an estimated 1.2 lakh drug users, mostly opiate users who consume heroin or brown sugar, locally known as ‘shaanflower’ or ‘SF’ due to its origin in Myanmar’s Shan province.

“If we estimate half a gram of consumption per person per day, and take even half the actual number of users, that amounts to 30 kg of heroin a day, or around 10,000 kg annually for Nagaland alone,” he said. “Extrapolated to 10 lakh users across the Northeast, the figure reaches 1 lakh kg per annum.”

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By contrast, Sharma noted that law enforcement agencies across the region collectively seize only around 5,000 kg of heroin or brown sugar each year which is a fraction of the estimated volume trafficked and consumed. He estimated that the value of the drugs moving through the region could be around INR 2.5 lakh crore near the border, and up to six times higher in mainland India.

“Drug trafficking is not merely a crime but a public health emergency and a threat to national security and public order,” he asserted.

Three pillars

Laying out what he called the “three pillars” of an operational strategy—coordination, enforcement, and accountability—Sharma urged all agencies to move from a “need to share” to a “duty to share” intelligence. He proposed that arrests involving medium and large quantities of narcotics should be immediately followed by joint interrogations through video conferencing among all Northeast states, ideally within 24 hours.

He observed that coordination remains the “Achilles heel” of law enforcement, with agencies working in isolation while traffickers operate across borders without restriction. “We often end up catching only users, retailers, and couriers while failing to investigate the links higher up the ladder,” he said.

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Calling for institutionally supported and collaborative operations rather than ad hoc individual efforts, the DGP stressed the need to focus on inter-state and inter-agency coordination, as well as on the emerging threat of synthetic drugs and hidden laboratories.

On accountability, Sharma said efforts against narcotics trafficking would be futile without successful prosecution and logical conclusion of cases. He emphasised the importance of building capacity among investigators and prosecutors, including localised training on the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, tailored to the Northeast’s specific context.

He also highlighted jails as vulnerable spaces where traffickers and their family members, often co-conspirators, maintain networks, warning that this loophole needed urgent attention.

Among the broader challenges, Sharma listed security and insurgency-related constraints, socio-economic vulnerabilities, lack of institutional coordination, and gaps in both health and legal systems.

He further recommended several policy-level interventions to strengthen the anti-drug framework, including comprehensive amendments to the NDPS Act, creation of a dedicated Northeast anti-drug trafficking agency, strengthening forensic infrastructure for drug analysis, and establishing a national drug tip-off reward and reporting system.

The conference, organised to strengthen coordination between central and state agencies, also featured a welcome address by the director general of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), followed by presentations on the narcotics landscape in the Northeast by the NCB’s deputy director general (North East Region) and a briefing from the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment on awareness and de-addiction schemes.

Senior officers from the NCB, Assam, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Sikkim, West Bengal, Tripura, and representatives from central forces including the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), Border Security Force (BSF), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), and Assam Rifles, as well as officials from various ministries and departments of government of India and state governments, attended the conference.