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'Drug trafficking

on the rise

in India'

ISLAMABAD: India is fast emerging as a main transit point for narcotics trafficking from South Asia with traffickers seeking new routes for smuggling heroin from Afghanistan into India.

According to the latest report of the International Narcotics Control Board, territory of India, is increasingly being used for the trans-shipment of heroin from South-East and South-West Asia. Most of the heroin smuggled into Europe out of Sri Lanka comes from India.

The report further said that India had one to five million opium users and more than one million heroin users.

In India, harvestible illicit opium covered an area of 5,750 hectares in 1995 against 5,500 hectares in 1994 and 4,400 hectares in 1993. The report also said that there was a rampant corruption among policemen, government officials and local and national politicians in India at a large scale and, therefore, at the government level successful prosecutions are rare.

Not only India exports drugs to the Western countries but a sizeable portion of it, is distributed within the country and mostly women folk are involved in this business.

Since January '96, the narcotics cell has caught 35 men and 21 women for possession of drugs. The percentage of women among those possessing drugs is more than half, said Hemant Karkare, Deputy Commissioner of Indian Narcotics Police.

Apart from smuggling, poppies are grown illicitly in the Indian Himalayan foothills of Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh and its north-east region near Bangladesh and Burmese borders. Diverted opium is consumed domestically and the processed is exported. The statements of the Indian officials and the report of the International Narcotics Control Board confirms that drug trafficking has been on the rise in India during the recent years and it has assumed the reputation of being a "haven" for the drug traffickers.-APP