The Indian security agencies, working to counter the rise of synthetic opioids in the country for illicit trade and consumption, are closely monitoring the entry of fentanyl - the killer drug- to the United States from its northern border with Canada.
India isn’t just a producer of domestically manufactured drugs but also a transit route and a supplier for the global drug trafficking networks as the precursor chemicals have time and again found their way into the hands of drug cartels around the world.
Control over precursor chemicals is exercised in India through the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985. In the last few years, reports of pharma medicine counterfeited with fentanyl have been reported by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to the Narcotics Control Bureau which has been examining the concerns and studying the modus operandi and routes used to supply the precursor chemicals to Mexican cartels.
There is no evidence so far to suggest Indian linkages in the supply of the killer drug into the US across its porous border with Canada. However, Indian security officials recognise that the terror and crime modules fuelling the drug menace in Punjab, which have made Canada and the US their safe haven, are not insulated from the rising fentanyl supply chains which operate between the two countries.
"Left unchecked, any drug cartel would dabble in the most lucrative business whether it is the supply of fentanyl or any other opioids."
In 2018, the Indian government had designated two direct fentanyl precursors, NPP and ANPP, as schedule B of the NDPS Act which restricted their export. In 2020, following reports of domestically manufactured ANPP being trafficked in Mexico, the Indian government tightened controls over ANPP and NPP by designating them as Schedule A in the NDPS RCS Order of 2013. This order brought the domestic manufacture, distribution, sale, possession, and use of those substances under national control.
The move came after the first case was detected in 2018, when two Indian nationals and a Mexican collaborator were arrested in Indore with possession of around 10 kg of illicitly manufactured fentanyl (IMF). At the time of the arrest, the three men were wearing protective gear used for handling dangerous chemicals, and it is alleged that they were conspiring to transport the IMF to Mexico.
The fentanyl was manufactured in a factory operated by one of the Indian nationals using the popular fentanyl precursors and ANPP. Also, in 2018, four Indian nationals were arrested in Mumbai with around 100 kg of NPP, the precursor for fentanyl.
However, drug enforcement agencies face challenges from the ever-evolving modus operandi of traffickers in the synthetic drug trade. At the moment, officials said abuse of fentanyl has not been reported at an alerting stage in India unlike other opioids like heroin and tramadol, but the worry is the precursors that can help manufacture it domestically if the transnational networks are allowed to spread their net wide.
"Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids like tramadol are most commonly trafficked through parcels as a diversion from the pharma drugs," said a senior official. Who carries these parcels and how they are being delivered to the drug trafficking agents in Canada or the US can only be unearthed when crime-terror-drug networks get busted on foreign soil. It has also to be seen whether there is a connection with the transnational criminal networks operating in both countries.