How Precursor Chemicals From India are Contributing to Myanmar's Narcotics Boom

A US State Department report has stated that the trend of exports from India could "continue and expand."

Image used for representation only.

(Photo: Deeksha Malhotra/The Quint)

Narcotics production is booming in Myanmar and India's unintended role is in the spotlight due to the large seizures of precursor chemicals over the past three months in Mizoram which were headed to the neighbouring country.

On 6 January, a truck laden with pseudoephedrine tablets was confiscated at Vairengte which yielded a big haul of 194 kilograms. Its market value was estimated to be around Rs 2 crore. In the same month, the Assam Rifles recovered 98,000 triprolidine and pseudoephedrine tablets worth Rs 9.80 crore from Aizawl and apprehended two people.

An image of the seizure in January from Mizoram.  

(Photo: special arrangement: Rajeev Bhattacharyya)

The biggest seizure happened last month at the border district of Champhai when 39,04,000 triprolidine and pseudoephedrine tablets worth an estimated Rs 390.04 crores were confiscated.  

An official said that some of these consignments were loaded at Silchar in the neighboring state of Assam but the drivers of the vehicles were ignorant about the place of manufacture. “A government agency has begun a probe to trace the origin of the shipments which were supposedly destined for Myanmar,” he added. 

Pseudoephedrine and Triprolidine in India

Pseudoephedrine is a ‘controlled substance’ in India. It is manufactured under regulation as a bulk drug used for medicines in the treatment of allergies, nasal congestion, asthma, common cold, and headache. Some medicines that use Triprolidine as an ingredient are mentioned in the list of drugs ‘banned for marketing’ in India.

Both commodities are also precursor chemicals used in the production of Amphetamine Type Stimulants (ATS) or synthetic drugs such as 'Yaba' and 'World Is Yours'. It is estimated that one kilogram of these chemicals can manufacture a large quantity of ATS that can be sold for around Rs 3 crore in the Indian market.

The seizure in Mizoram came close on the heels of a similar incident in the Indian border state of Manipur on 22 November last year when 118 kilograms of pseudoephedrine were confiscated. And similar to the last episode, the origin of the consignment could not be traced which is believed to be somewhere among the mainland states of India. Manipur is contiguous to Mizoram and among the four states in India sharing a border with Myanmar.  

Not only Myanmar, but many countries source their illicit supply of these chemicals from India as may be gleaned from the seizures in the country over the past few years. In 2017, a large consignment of 475 kilograms for Malaysia was confiscated at the Bengaluru airport. Last year, another seizure, booked for Australia, was made at the same airport. The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) had said in a report earlier that India was turning into a hub of illegal ephedrine trade. 

Export Trends Show No Signs of Slowing Down

Echoing the INCB was a report by the US State Department on international narcotics control strategy which said that the export of ephedrine from India had surged to more than 77 tons in 2020 which was an increase of almost 58 tons from the previous year. The report added that the trend of exports from India could “continue and expand.”  

An investigation by India’s Narcotics Control Bureau revealed that a popular modus operandi of the trade is booking consignments with fictitious and non-existent consignee names and addresses.

The principal transport routes which are often circuitous originate in the southern states of the country to destinations in the east and northeast such as Kolkata and Guwahati.

Further, it points out that a network of Tamil expatriates in Myanmar inhabiting the border region between the two countries dominates the trafficking of ephedrine from India.

Manufacturing units have sprung up in other states of the country besides the southern states. In August last year, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence busted a factory at Yamuna Nagar in Haryana resulting in the seizure of 661 kilograms of Ephedrine and 5,200 kilograms of raw materials valued at Rs 133 crores in the international illicit market. Ephedrine is also a precursor chemical for the manufacture of ATS.

'Increased Sophistication in Production, Trafficking'

More smuggling routes to Myanmar have emerged through the border states facilitating larger volumes of export. In addition, the regulatory mechanism in India has abundant loopholes enabling the manufacturers and traders to take advantage and divert consignments to different countries through multifarious routes. 

An Indian government official was of the view that the export of pseudoephedrine to Myanmar was “primarily owing to the boom in the production of ATS and Heroin No 4 in Myanmar.”

With the economy shrinking in the country, drug trafficking has emerged as a major source of livelihood for a large section of people,” he claimed.

That the production of ATS has soared in Myanmar after the coup in 2021 is indicated by the ‘record levels’ of seizures in the country which could also mean an ‘increased sophistication in production, trafficking and availability’ of synthetic drugs as mentioned in a recent report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

In India as well, larger volumes of ATS have been confiscated which increased from 431 kilograms in 2018 to 2.2 tons a year later. The country’s northeast is used as a corridor for ferrying drugs to the mainland states and also from Myanmar to Bangladesh where the consumption is estimated at 2 million ATS pills every day. 

(Rajeev Bhattacharyya is a senior journalist in Assam. Views expressed are personal. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the authors' own.The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)