On the evening of August 12, security forces stopped a vehicle near the India- Myanmar border in Saitual, Mizoram and seized nearly 1kg of heroin packed in 73 plastic soap cases. Around the same time, at Senapati, Manipur , the police intercepted a vehicle and arrested a man carrying nearly half a kilogram of heroin concealed in 37 soap cases. Hours later, around midnight, in Guwahati , Assam , the police caught two men with half a kilogram of heroin packed into 10 soap cases near the city’s interstate bus terminus.
Security forces officials and state police are not surprised. “Every heroin shipment from Myanmar is smuggled in plastic soap cases. In Myanmar, this has been the trend for several years. With insurgency almost over in northeastern states, the government’s focus is on drugs, so, naturally we are making recoveries every day. The most common drug (smuggled) from Myanmar is heroin.
Across many police stations in the Northeast, piles of plastic soap cases are accumulating, with agencies intensifying the war against drugs following Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah ’s pledge of a drug-free India by 2047. There are different sizes of such cases that can fit 50,100, 200 grams of heroin. The scale of the problem was the most visible in April when the Champhai police destroyed drugs worth ₹ 450 crore seized in various operations. Around 2,000–2,500 seized plastic soap cases were also destroyed along with the drugs.
The soap cases are hidden below vegetables, fruits, inside special cavities or with random household items and transported by road,” said an Assam police officer, who asked not to be named. An inspector from a Champhai police in Mizoram, who asked not to be named, said the recovery of the soap cases marks the beginning of a tedious legal and administrative process that can continue for months until both the heroin and the cases are eventually destroyed after obtaining the necessary legal orders. Modi also spoke about drug addiction as a major challenge and a drug-free India as a collective responsibility in his Independence Day speech on Saturday.
