Myanmar replaces Afghanistan as key source of opium, impact seen on India’s eastern border: NCB

Union Home Minister Amit Shah launches the Vision Document on Narcotics Control at the 10th High Level Meeting of NCORD in New Delhi on June 26, 2026. Photo: X/@AmitShah via ANI

Following a Taliban-imposed ban on the drug in Afghanistan in 2022, Myanmar has become an alternative source of global opium supply and the effects are already being felt along India’s eastern borders, through the Manipur corridor, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) said in its 2026 annual report.

A report released by Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday (June 26, 2026) highlighted the fact that the northeastern states of Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland are facing the sharpest frontline exposure due to increased drug production in Myanmar. Porous border mechanisms, including the Free Movement Regime (FMR) along the Indo-Myanmar border, have created the conditions under which these states have transitioned from peripheral transit zones to active repositories for the distribution of narcotics into the Indian interior.

According to the NCB report, illicit opium cultivation in Myanmar will expand by approximately 56% between 2021 and 2023, with the area under poppy cultivation reaching 45,200 hectares. India’s eastern border through the Manipur corridor is the most direct and permeable entry point for this expanding manufacturing base and the implications are already visible, the report said.

Unfenced, porous edge

“Myanmar’s Golden Triangle has expanded as a supplier of opiates as well as a dominant center for methamphetamine (Yaba tablets). Convergence, especially in areas controlled by ethnic armed groups in Shan State, has created polyvalent drug production. The Manipur corridor, through which Indian National Highway 102 passes, is a major entry point for heroin and methamphetamine tablets.

The second major human trafficking corridor enters India through Champhai in Mizoram, which shares proximity with Myanmar’s Chin State. The drugs are smuggled through unfenced and porous stretches of the border and routed towards Silchar in Assam’s Barak Valley via Aizawl and adjoining road networks, the report added.

In 2025, Mizoram accounted for 1,477 kg of amphetamine-type stimulants seized, out of a total seizure of 3,485 kg across the country. Other states where such yields have been reported are Manipur (535 kg), Delhi (454 kg), Gujarat (308 kg) and Karnataka (164 kg).

Drug trafficking based on drones

On the other side of the country, despite a crackdown by the Taliban in 2022 that cut Afghan opium production by 93% from its peak, about 13,200 tonnes of the pre-ban narcotic maintains smuggling pipelines and enters India across the western border.

The NCB said drug smuggling across the Pakistan border using drones has seen a five-fold increase in the last five years, especially into Punjab. In 2025, there were 305 such cases, resulting in the seizure of 468 kg of narcotics, a 96% increase in quantity over 2024. Punjab alone accounted for 298 such cases and 461 kg of seizures, mainly heroin (449,751 kg) and methamphetamine (9,018 kg). Overall, 2,086 kg of narcotics were seized in Punjab, accounting for 58% of the total seizures, which reached 3,567 kg across the country.

“The scale of this threat is underlined by the growth trajectory: from just 3 incidents (10 kg) in 2021, incidents increased to 35 (148 kg) in 2022, then 28 (103 kg) in 2023, before accelerating to 178 incidents (2036 kg) in 2024 and 205 kg) in 2025, a hundredfold increase in the number of incidents in five years,” the report said.

Land and sea routes

This exponential increase reflects the increasing operational sophistication of smuggling networks using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to bypass traditional border controls, the NCB said. Other incidents were reported in Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir.

“The South Asian branch (of the drug trade through Afghanistan) flows through Pakistan into India via the land border in Punjab and Rajasthan and the maritime border along the coasts of Gujarat and Maharashtra, a route of increasing concern due to the use of fishing vessels and coastal vessels that operate below the detection threshold of the Standard Maritime Corridor,” NCB – the world’s main corridor – Paki said. opiate trafficking complex.

Published – 26 June 2026 21:30 IST