Breaking a narcotics-and-hawala ring worth nearly Rs 100 crore is a notable win for investigators. Yet Operation Trident’s larger lesson is sobering: the drug trade feeding India’s Northeast is run less like a smuggling racket and more like a multinational business, with its factories, bankers and logistics chiefs sitting largely beyond Indian jurisdiction. The question for policymakers is whether a country can win a war on drugs when the enemy’s supply base lies across the border.
The October 23 raids
On October 23, the Narcotics Control Bureau, working with the Enforcement Directorate, the Assam Rifles and state police forces, hit 38 locations at once across Assam, Mizoram and Manipur. Eighteen people were arrested, 1,424 bank accounts were frozen and properties worth Rs 17.82 crore were attached. Investigators say the hawala flows they traced add up to close to Rs 100 crore.
The raids form part of the Centre’s “Drugs Free India by 2029” campaign, spearheaded by Union Home Minister Amit Shah. But the operation matters for what it reveals, not merely for what it seized. The old picture of couriers slipping consignments across a leaky frontier no longer fits. What emerged instead was an organised enterprise in which chemical suppliers, manufacturers, transporters, money handlers, shell companies and local fixers each play a defined role.
A trade that runs in both directions
At the heart of the case is a two-way corridor through the Champhai-Zokhawthar sector of Mizoram, on the India-Myanmar border. Chemicals flow east, and finished drugs flow west. Investigators allege that substances such as caffeine anhydrous and aluminium chloride anhydrous were supplied to small pharmacies and general stores in Aizawl and the border belt, especially Champhai district. These shops served as fronts for the consignments, which were then passed on to tablet-pressing units in Myanmar. Caffeine anhydrous acts as a bulking agent in Yaba tablets, which contain methamphetamine.
The end products, together with heroin and brown sugar, allegedly return through the Tiau River crossing at Zokhawthar, facing Khawmawi on the Myanmar side. They are said to be stored in Champhai before moving on towards Aizawl, Vairengte and the Assam and Tripura borders. Concealment in soap cases, and movement by taxis, motorcycles and truck convoys with escort vehicles, shows how traffickers hide inside ordinary traffic.
Catching a consignment at the border is necessary, but it cannot on its own touch the factories and distribution networks that will produce the next one.
Where the money went
The financial trail may be the most telling part of the investigation. Hawala operators in Champhai allegedly collected payments for drug shipments from across the Northeast. The cash was then fed into the banking system through mini-ATMs and customer service points in Churachandpur, Manipur, and elsewhere. Accounts held by pharmacies, general stores and private individuals were reportedly rented to the syndicate for a commission of Rs 500 per lakh passed through them.
From there, funds moved online, with minimal cash withdrawals, to unauthorised rupee-kyat exchangers in Champhai, who squared accounts with suppliers in Myanmar. Shell companies in Kolkata, New Delhi, Guwahati and Mumbai were allegedly used to shift money, and the proceeds were parked in real estate and land around Champhai. Drug trafficking, in other words, has become a financial enterprise first and a smuggling operation second. Couriers are usually the most expendable people in the chain. The financiers, account providers, chemical suppliers and investors of illicit profits are just as important to pursue. Financial intelligence, money-laundering probes and asset confiscation therefore belong at the centre of India’s anti-narcotics strategy. Freezing accounts and attaching property can cripple a syndicate, but only if investigations are carried through to convictions.
The Myanmar problem
India’s hardest challenge lies outside its jurisdiction. Myanmar has become a leading source of illicit opium and synthetic drugs, and the military takeover of February 2021 and the fighting since have made the border regions harder to secure. Armed groups hold sway over several of those areas, and some are alleged to fund themselves by facilitating smuggling. The 1,643-km frontier winds through forests, hills and remote villages in Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh, and large stretches remain unfenced. The Centre’s plan to fence the boundary and revisit the Free Movement Regime has drawn opposition from border communities, notably Nagas, Mizos and Kukis, whose family, ethnic and cultural ties straddle the line. That leaves New Delhi with a genuine dilemma. Security concerns are real, but so are the social and historical bonds of people who live along the border. Intelligence sharing, surveillance, joint patrols, tighter customs enforcement and the cooperation of local communities must carry equal weight, backed by steady diplomatic engagement with Myanmar on narcotics and precursor chemicals. Without action against factories and major suppliers on the far side, enforcement at home will remain half a strategy.
Assam and a connected region
The Bangladesh border, with its unfenced and riverine stretches, poses a separate challenge. Assam sits at a strategic junction: its roads link Mizoram and Manipur to the rest of India, making it a natural transit route for drugs headed to other markets. Shell companies in Guwahati and other cities show that the networks’ financial reach extends far beyond remote border villages.
The Northeast should therefore be treated as one connected security region, not a patchwork of separate state jurisdictions. Police forces in Assam, Mizoram, Manipur, Tripura and neighbouring states need to share intelligence on suspicious transactions, chemical purchases, vehicle movements and repeat offenders in real time. Central agencies such as the NCB and ED should reinforce state enforcement rather than replace it.
Narcotics are also a public-health and social emergency. Addiction has taken hold in communities across the Northeast, particularly among the young, and the arrival of heroin, synthetic drugs and organised distribution threatens the region’s social fabric. A credible campaign has to go beyond arrests and seizures to include prevention, awareness, accessible de-addiction centres, rehabilitation and long-term community involvement. Families and local groups need help spotting addiction early so that people receive treatment instead of being pushed to the margins. Authorities must also tackle the economic fragility that makes some border residents easy recruits for trafficking syndicates.
What success must look like
Operation Trident proves that coordinated intelligence, financial investigation and multi-agency action can crack a sophisticated network. It should be read as the opening of a long campaign, not a decisive victory. The “Drugs Free India by 2029” mission cannot be judged by tonnes seized, arrests made or accounts frozen. The measure is whether supply chains are dismantled, financiers and manufacturers convicted, illicit proceeds recovered, and the flow of drugs to vulnerable communities sharply reduced.
The Northeast is especially exposed to the narcotics economy of the Golden Triangle, where Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet, and its porous borders and rugged terrain add to the difficulty. India needs to pair border security with financial intelligence, regional diplomacy, inter-state coordination and a full public-health response.
Trident has laid bare a cartel’s machinery; whether agencies can dismantle it for good is the question that matters now. For the Northeast, the stakes go well beyond one operation: they touch the security of India’s borders and, above all, the future of a generation growing up under the shadow of drugs.
The writer is Deputy Director, Assam Information Centre, New Delhi.