Worried over increasing drug trafficking from Myanmar into its northeastern states due to the ongoing strife and resultant instability, India has given its border-guard force additional police powers to check the menace and fight it as a priority.

Raised as a specialist counter-insurgency force by the British, the Assam Rifles now guards the country's 1,643 km border of India's northeast with Myanmar.

The force has been asking for additional police powers to fight the drug menace on this long border with Myanmar, where the infamous "Golden Triangle", one of the two largest producers of narcotics drugs in the world, is located.

Now the Indian government has extended to the Assam Rifles two provisions of the country's Narcotic Drugs & Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985.

Section 42 of the NDPS Act authorizes the empowered officers of this force now to "search the premises, seizure of the drugs, detain any person or arrest the person who has committed the offence without a warrant."

Section 67 of the NDPS Act gives the power to "the officer mentioned under section 42 to examine any person or record the statement."

Lt Gen Pradeep Chandran Nair, Director General of Assam Rifles, told this writer that his force is now working on procedures to operationalize these legal provisions that, he said, will boost the anti-narcotics capability of the force.

"We are currently working out our procedures on how to implement these new powers that have been vested upon us by the Indian Government," he said in an exclusive interview for Mizzima. “Once implemented, you shall surely see a rise in our success on this front.”

Lt Gen Nair said that the seizures of narcotics by his force have risen exponentially since 2019 in the northeastern states bordering Myanmar.

Seizures by other agencies like state police forces and India's Narcotics Control Bureau have also risen in the region.

Nair said the total value of the drugs seized by Assam Rifles in Northeastern states in 2019 was worth Rs. 516 crores ($ 68.8 million) at the current market value. In 2020, the value of drug seizures by Assam Rifles in the region were worth Rs. 688 crores ($ 91.73 million) and in 2021 the drug seized by Assam Rifles in Northeast India were worth Rs. 908 crores ($ 121.06 million).

“We have been successful in apprehending large volumes of narcotics that have been moving into India lately along the India-Myanmar border. We surely have our intelligence in place, however, we could do better with the added use of technology and greater cooperation between various intelligence and security agencies,” Lt Gen Nair said.

But the Assam Rifles chief admitted that their seizures "could well be the tip of the iceberg."

"The rise in seizures also points to greater volume of trafficking and production as much it testifies to our vigilance. The instability in Myanmar seems to have boosted production of narcotic drugs in the Golden Triangle and elsewhere in the conflict-ravaged country. That's huge worry for India and other neighbours of Myanmar," Lt Gen Nair said.

On December 7 2021, Assam Rifles troops seized 54 kgs of brown sugar and 154 kgs of Ice Meth from the house of an ethnic Burmese lady in the border town of Moreh in Manipur state. This one-time seizure is valued at about Rs 500 crores ($ 60 million).

But Lt Gen Nair said the rise in seizures of narcotics should not be “seen in isolation”.

He said huge drug seizures in countries like Laos and Thailand, like in Northeast India, pointed to a huge rise in production of drugs like heroin or methamphetamine originating in Myanmar's “Golden Triangle”.

"This is something all neighbours of Myanmar have to worry about. We in Northeast India are now giving as much importance to fighting insurgencies as to fighting the drug menace. Our Home Minister has made this clear," Lt Gen Nair said.

He said police in Laos had confiscated 55.6 million methamphetamine pills and 1.5 tons of crystal meth (a more potent version of the drug) in a major operation in Oct'2021.

“The UN said this was Asia’s largest drug bust ever! Law enforcement agencies in South East Asia have grown accustomed to breaking records in drug seizures," he said.

Lt Gen Nair said the free movement regime between ethnic tribespeople on the India-Myanmar border and the current flow of refugees from Myanmar made it easy for drug peddlers to “melt into the crowd and avoid detection”.

India's federal government has asked for closing down the border but local governments, like the one in Mizoram state led by a former rebel leader Zoramthanga, have refused to close their doors to refugees, who share ethnic bonds across the border.

Between 20,000 to 30,000 refugees from Myanmar have entered India's northeastern states of Mizoram and Manipur since the February 2021 military takeover in the country led to widespread conflict and displacement.

They belong mostly to Myanmar's Chin State and Sagaing Division, where ethnic rebel armies and newly formed public resistance groups have battled the Tatmadaw or Myanmar Army, which have even used heavy artillery and helicopter gunships to target the fighters and the people backing them.

The fighting has taken a curious turn with Indian intelligence saying the Burmese military is reportedly using northeast Indian rebel groups to attack the refugees and the resistance groups.

A number of rebel groups from India's northeast have been operating from bases in the jungles of Sagaing region. India has been pushing Myanmar to push these groups out, as Bangladesh and Bhutan has done in the past.

For a while in the last two years, there were reports of some Burmese operations against them, even as the Indian army obliged with action against the Arakan Army in Myanmar's Rakhine state.

But after the February 2021 coup, the equations have somewhat changed. The Arakan Army has signed a ceasefire with the Myanmar army, which now has other enemies to contend.

But even as reports surfaced about the Tatmadaw using ethnic Northeast Indian rebels, fighters of the Chin National Army (CNA) have reportedly attacked a base of rebels from India's Manipur state.

Myanmar media report the attack took place on January 14 at Seram village not far from the Indian border and at least 10 to 20 rebels from Manipur's Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) were killed.

The PLA had attacked and killed an Indian army colonel, his wife and minor child with four other soldiers in an attack on a Manipur border road in November last year.