Heroin, The Deadly New High

From the poppy fields of Southern Afghanistan to the streets of India, a surge in heroin shipments from the golden crescent region is exacerbating India’s existing drug problem

- Sandeep Unnithan

THE TWO RUST-BROWN SHIPPING containers from Iran were among thousands stacked in neat rows like toy bricks in India’s largest sea­ port, Mundra. For the Department of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) officials who had zeroed in on the shipment, these 20­feet­long containers originat­ ing in Iran’s Bandar Abbas port and dispatched to Gujarat’s arid Kutch district, were like two needles in a very giant haystack. The port receives 5.6 million such containers each year. However, it was the consignor that piqued the sleuths’ interest—Hasan Husain Ltd, a firm based in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan. The shipment of talc stones, a clay mineral used as raw material for cosmetics, was headed for Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh and meant for a Chennai­based couple, Machavaram Sudhakar and his wife Vaisali. When DRI sleuths opened the containers on September 15, they spotted hundreds of white synthetic bags, each large enough to seat an adult. Beneath the loosely­packed talc stones was 3.2 tonne of pure Afghan heroin. It was one of India’s largest drug hauls. The quantity was, as one government official put it, enough to drug Mumbai’s 12 million citizens. The drugs would have sold on the streets of Mumbai for some Rs 3,000 crore. With the Mundra seizures, the total heroin haul this year has crossed six tonne, double the 3.2 tonne and 3.8 tonne seized in 2019 and 2020, respectively.