Security agencies have dismantled an international drug trafficking network operating across India's northeast, arresting 18 people and freezing hundreds of bank accounts in a coordinated crackdown codenamed Operation Trident. Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced the success of the operation on Sunday, describing it as another major blow in the government's campaign against narcotics.
According to Shah, agencies launched simultaneous raids at 38 locations across Assam, Manipur and Mizoram on October 23, smashing a cartel that moved narcotics across the borders of India, Myanmar and Bangladesh. The corridor used by the network has become known to enforcement agencies as the "Death Triangle Corridor", a reference to the three-country border region through which heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs have flowed into India for years.
The scale of what the operation uncovered was substantial. Shah said the investigation revealed hawala transactions worth Rs 100 crore, a parallel money-moving system that allows funds to cross borders without passing through formal banking channels. Investigators froze 1,424 bank accounts linked to the network, attached properties valued at Rs 17.82 crore, seized 500 detonators and recovered Rs 12 lakh in cash.
The detonators are a reminder of how closely drug trafficking in the region is intertwined with other forms of organised crime and insurgency, where explosives and weapons move along the same routes as narcotics.
In a post on X announcing the operation, Shah congratulated the anti-narcotics team comprising central agencies and the police forces of the three states. "Modi Govt deals another lethal blow against drugs with Operation Trident," he wrote. "The offensive attests to India's Himalayan resolve to realise the mission of eradicating every drug network by 31 December 2029. India will hammer until the last nail is driven into the coffin of drug cartels."
That deadline, the end of 2029, is one Shah has set out publicly before. Speaking at Police Commemoration Day in New Delhi on October 21, he announced that the Union Home Ministry had decided that during the remaining part of 2026 and through 2027, 2028 and 2029, a united fight would be waged against drugs over the next three-and-a-half years, and that the country would be free of the drug problem by December 31, 2029.
He described the goal as even more important than tackling the country's other internal security hotspots, arguing that drugs hollow out future generations, burden the economy and provide financial support to organisations engaged in anti-national activities.
"Today, I want to call upon police forces across the country to wholeheartedly work towards achieving the goal of a drug-free India, following the roadmap we have prepared and the target set by our respected Prime Minister Narendra Modi, so that we can protect our future generations," Shah said on that occasion. Operation Trident, launched just two days later, is presented by the government as the first major demonstration of that intensified campaign.
The northeast has long been on the front line of India's drug problem. Myanmar, which shares a long and porous border with Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh, is one of the world's largest producers of opium and methamphetamine. Drugs manufactured in Myanmar's border regions are smuggled into India, and from there distributed to markets across the country, while proceeds flow back out through hawala networks and front businesses.
Bangladesh, on the other side of the corridor, is both a transit route and a market. The involvement of three states and multiple central agencies in Operation Trident reflects the fact that no single state police force can take on a network that deliberately spreads itself across jurisdictions.
The financial dimension of the operation is particularly significant. Freezing 1,424 bank accounts and attaching properties worth nearly Rs 18 crore strikes at the economic infrastructure of the cartel, not just its couriers. Enforcement agencies have increasingly argued that drug networks can only be dismantled by following the money, since arrested couriers are quickly replaced while financial networks take far longer to rebuild.
The exposure of Rs 100 crore in hawala transactions suggests investigators were able to map a substantial part of the network's money trail before moving in.
The seizure of 500 detonators adds a further dimension. In the northeast, where several insurgent groups have historically funded themselves through extortion and smuggling, the line between drug trafficking and militancy has often been blurred. Detonators in the hands of a trafficking network raise questions about the network's connections and its potential to supply armed groups, and investigators will now be examining whether the seized explosives point to wider linkages.
For the states involved, the operation is also a test of coordination. Assam, Manipur and Mizoram each have their own police forces, intelligence networks and political contexts, and joint operations of this kind require a degree of trust and information-sharing that has not always been easy to achieve.
The fact that 38 locations were hit simultaneously suggests a high level of planning and secrecy, since advance warning at any one location could have allowed suspects elsewhere to destroy evidence or flee.
The government has framed the operation as part of a broader national mission rather than a one-off success. Whether the December 2029 target for a drug-free India is achievable is a question that will be debated, given the scale of the trade and the difficulty of policing thousands of kilometres of border.
But Operation Trident, with its combination of arrests, asset seizures and financial disruption, is the template the government appears to intend for the campaign ahead: coordinated, multi-state, and aimed as much at the money as at the drugs themselves.
The corridor at the heart of the operation has troubled enforcement agencies for decades. Myanmar's border regions, part of the notorious Golden Triangle, produce vast quantities of methamphetamine and opium, and traffickers exploit the difficult terrain, dense forests and long, lightly guarded frontiers to move consignments into India.
From the northeast, drugs are channelled to metropolitan markets across the country, while the proceeds return through hawala operators who can move money without leaving a paper trail in the formal banking system. Breaking that cycle requires not just seizing drugs at the border but dismantling the financial and logistical networks behind them, which is why the account freezes and property attachments in Operation Trident matter as much as the arrests.
The operation also fits into a pattern of increasingly large, intelligence-led crackdowns in the region. In recent years, central agencies working with state police forces have seized record quantities of drugs in Assam, Manipur and Mizoram, and have repeatedly pointed to the use of the northeast as a gateway for narcotics entering India. Each major seizure has been followed by claims that the network has been broken, and each time new routes and new couriers have emerged.
The government's insistence on a deadline, a drug-free India by the end of 2029, is therefore as much a political commitment as an enforcement target, and its credibility will rest on whether operations like Trident can be sustained and repeated rather than celebrated as isolated successes.
(Reporting based on NDTV and India TV News.)