Evolving ways of transnational cocaine smuggling into India – Firstpost

The frequency of cocaine smuggling from South America into India is on the increase. In January 2024, four individual international passengers carrying capsules containing cocaine were intercepted at Delhi and Mumbai airports. In three instances, the ingested capsules were extracted from their stomach after medical procedures. The net weight of the recovered cocaine was 5.164 kg with a street price of Rs 66.58 crore. These carriers—two Brazilians from Sao Paulo and two Africans from Kenya and Senegal—had arrived from Sao Paulo, Brazil via Paris, Addis Ababa and Nairobi respectively.

Previously in October 2024, the arrest of a Liberian national at the IGI airport had led to the recovery of 1,660 gm of cocaine. He had arrived from Dubai. Given the high-purity cocaine and the sheer quantity of drugs being recovered from these mules, it is evident that India’s profile is rapidly changing from being a transit country to being a destination and consumer of cocaine.

Modus operandi

In the coming months, investigations into these arrests may shed light on the international smuggling network operating from South America and Africa. The arrest of Thoma Mendy, a Senegalese national, has already uncovered some of the intricate connections involved in this rapidly evolving transnational organised crime.

Mendy had a history of carrying cocaine from Africa to India using fake passports. Being a professional mule until his luck ran out, he has been in touch with drug syndicate members in Sierra Leone. On this occasion, he was carrying the cocaine in a carton, which had been handed over to him by a person of African ethnicity at a hotel in Sierra Leone. The Syndicate had promised him US$3000 on successful delivery of the consignment in Mumbai.

In addition to air routes, the agency also noted a significant rise in drug trafficking via couriers and parcels. Air routes have gained popularity owing to the speed and volume of international air traffic, which facilitates the rapid movement of illicit substances. The chances of an unsuspected passenger—a middle-aged woman or a man with light luggage passing undetected through the Customs Green Channel is much higher. Mendy’s case is a pointer.

His story is in full conformity with the findings in the 2023-24 annual report of India’s Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI). A 100 per cent increase seizures in the past year underlined that cocaine smuggling via air routes has become a dominant method of trafficking the expensive drug into India. The number of cocaine-related cases rose from 21 in 2022-23 to 47 in 2023-24, with most of these seizures occurring at airports. Of the 8,224 kg of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances seized in 2023-24, 107 kg were cocaine with a market worth of Rs 975 crore. Cocaine is the only drug to witness such an upward trajectory.

Increasingly sophisticated smuggling methods, shifting global trade patterns, and the emerging technologies that facilitate such trade are stretching the capacities of law enforcers.

For instance, the job of detecting cocaine smuggling through the established procedures has become even more difficult in recent times with the emergence of ‘black cocaine’. This new variety of drugs, masked with substances like charcoal or iron oxide, resembles a black powder, similar to industrial products such as printer toner or metal ores. Requiring complex extraction processes to revert it to pure cocaine, it can evade standard detection methods like sniffing.

Beyond the airport

While seizures at the airports gain media attention due to their innovative modus operandi, much bigger seizures have occurred outside the airports as well, indicating that a large volume of cocaine is managing to enter the country without being detected at the entry points. According to standard estimates, only a tenth of the drugs entering the country are seized.

In October 2024, in the biggest-ever drug bust in New Delhi, officials confiscated over 560 kilograms of cocaine sourced from Colombia that had reached Gujarat through cargo ships via Dubai. It led to multiple arrests of smugglers and dealers linked to an international drug syndicate that operated in India and Dubai. As investigations continued, more skeletons tumbled out of the closet. Within days, police seized another 208 kg of cocaine hidden in packs of chips and other food items in a rented shop. In the same month, a joint operation between Delhi and Gujarat state police departments resulted in the confiscation of 518 kilograms of cocaine from a pharmaceutical company in Gujarat.

The main kingpin had a family-run publishing and real estate business. He, through a Dubai-based drug cartel which is headed by an Indian national, imported cocaine from countries like Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and Mexico. All monetary transactions for the drug deals were conducted using the Tether cryptocurrency, making tracing the transactions a challenge. From a central warehousing facility, cocaine was being distributed to handlers based in major Indian cities, often during the onset of festive seasons, when the local demands were high.

The Source and the Route

South America now produces more than twice as much cocaine as it did a decade ago. Nearly each of the region’s mainland nations has become a major producer or mover of the drug. From there, multiple routes pass through Oceania, Africa, and the Middle East, depending upon the destination.

While Colombia was always the leading source of cocaine worldwide, in recent years organised criminals in Brazil have evolved into a powerful narco insurgency with transnational reach. Brazil today is the second-largest player in the cocaine trade with two major drug syndicates—the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and the Comando Vermelho. Both source their cocaine from Bolivia and Peru, which enters Brazil through Parana, a state bordering Paraguay.

Both PCC and Comando Vermelho have connections in Oceania, using routes along the Pacific coast of South America. Large consignments of cocaine have entered Australia through this route. The low-scale transhipment of cocaine using individual air travellers to India indicates that they are yet to establish a dedicated supply route into South Asia.

In Colombia, the cultivation of Coca crops tripled in 2024. The amount of land used to grow the drug’s base ingredient is more than five times what it was when the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar was killed in 1993. For decades, cocaine consumers were primarily Americans. The industry has since grown and globalised, with new routes, new markets and new criminal enterprises.

The booming trade has attracted Russian, Turkish, Balkan and Italian criminal groups to South America to have a piece of the pie. As a result, the Colombian syndicates, now have well-established supply routes to Africa and the Middle East. In December 2024, a drug trafficker, wanted in connection with an international drug smuggling operation through the Belgian port of Antwerp, was arrested in Dubai. Each year, the increase in sea cargo volume provides traffickers with greater opportunities to conceal their contraband among legal shipments.

Conclusion

After the Delhi drug bust, the police sounded optimistic about disrupting the network in a major way. However, the setback can only be perceived as temporary. Drugs including cocaine typically follow the demand and supply formula. Lifestyle changes among affluent youths are creating sufficient demand for cocaine in India, which is the most expensive drug at a price tag of more than Rs 12 crore per kg. The fact that cocaine is only for the creamy layer among drug users and not for the average ones, may promote a complacent attitude. However, that would be perilous, given the capacity of the undetected smuggling networks to swiftly expand into smuggling all sorts of contraband using the same route and mode, thereby endangering national security.

The experiences from counternarcotic operations around the world indicate that combating drug trafficking is a challenging and ongoing effort. Success is more likely when law enforcement agencies enhance their capabilities and when there is strong cooperation and coordination among different agencies and affected countries. Official policies aimed at curbing the smuggling of cocaine must take these realities into account.

The writer is the Director of Mantraya, a Goa-based research forum and the author of ‘National Security Decision-making in India’. He formerly served as a Deputy Director in the National Security Council Secretariat. He tweets @BibhuRoutray. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.