The Covid-19 epidemic has caused record levels of unemployment in India’s northeast and many residents have been tempted by the quick cash drug smuggling offers.
One “soap box”, a 14g packet of heroin, can be purchased for 5,000-10,000 Indian rupees (£50-£100) from a smuggler and sold in a large Indian city, such as Delhi, for 40,000 rupees (£400).
Mr Hazarika said that he filed 205 cases of drug possession or trafficking in 2020, but this has surged to 417 in 2021.
Traffickers taking drugs to the major cities of Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata are using increasingly sophisticated methods to avoid detection. A popular ruse involves filling the fuel chamber of a car with powder.
“Three months back, we received credible information that a known smuggler was planning to run some heroin through Assam,” said Pushpraj Singh, a superintendent in the Assam Police for the district of Karbi Anglong.
“When he arrived at the checkpoint, he had hidden the drugs under a seat where his wife and newborn baby were sitting, to create a distraction. I could not believe a parent would use their five- or six-day-old baby in this way.”
Mr Singh added that the abundance of illegal arms in the state meant that smugglers would often open fire on the police.
Alongside the rise in drug smuggling is a rise in drug use. In 2018, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that about 2.2 per cent of Assam’s 31 million citizens were narcotics users.
This figure has grown rapidly in 2021, according to Dr Sandeep Hansel, who heads the committee on Socio-Economic and Health Development Assam, a state-run organisation tasked with reducing drug use in the state.
“Earlier, drugs weren’t here in Assam. We would only see high-class users, the children from wealthy families who had gone to study or work in Mumbai or Bengaluru,” said Dr Hansel.
“But now, drugs are available everywhere, in every village. In one day, I could see 100 drug users and the majority will be from lower economic classes and tribal communities. I am very much worried about drug use in Assam, about the future of my state.”
