Justice Arindam Lodh of Tripura High Court has asked for effective steps against dubious and fake pharmaceutical companies who are alleged to have been supplying precursor chemicals to poppy cultivators across the North East border to turn the opium into synthetic drugs and psychotropic substances.
In his address in the seminar ‘Cross Border Organized Crimes (NDPS, Human Trafficking & terror funding etc) – Impact Assessment and Legal Solutions’ organized by the “Tripura Judicial Academy” recently Justice Lodh also pointed out the ominous expansion of ‘Golden Triangle’ comprising Thailand, Myanmar and Laos from where a large part of drugs are smuggled to other parts of the world into ‘Golden Pentagon’ with Vietnam-Cambodia and Nagaland-Manipur of Northeast India being included in the area.
“This coinage of the term itself gives an ominous signal. The profits that several Narcotics and synthetic drugs, psychotropic substances business are making, how much formidable it is in nature, can very well be guessed with the expansion of the triangle into pentagon” he said.
Justice Lodh has said, “We in the North East India are particularly worried as this has worsened the situation here. This region shares a long stretch of 1,643 kilometres border with Myanmar- one of the hub centres for the drugs productions. And most part of this border line is mountainous and extremely difficult to keep under constant surveillance”.
“According to reports Myanmar produces 80 per cent of the heroin in Southeast Asia and is responsible for 60 percent of the world’s supply. And about 90 per cent of this mountainous terrain of the Golden Triangle is under poppy cultivation and accounts for 65 per cent of estimated total world opium poppy cultivation”.
“But this is one side of the story” Justice Lodh has said and then added: Only poppy cultivation is not enough. The drug cartels need this poppy to convert into synthetic drugs or psychotropic substances. And for this conversion some specific chemicals are required. And this chemicals –mostly acetic anhydride, ephedrine, pseudo-ephedrine, potassium permanganate and many other chemicals—known as precursors – are also needed in huge quantity in view of the massive poppy yields that need to be converted. The Golden Triangle or for that matter Myanmar’s mountainous region may produce poppy in huge quantity but the place is not conducive for geographical and other reasons to produce precursor chemicals”.
“According to a research paper a large part of these chemicals – acetic anhydride, ephedrine, pseudo-ephedrine, potassium permanganate etc are actually supplied by some dubious chemical companies of our country itself. In fact reports suggest that a huge number of fake pharmaceutical companies came up in the 1980s and 1990s in Manipur and Northeast India. These chemical companies smuggle acetic anhydride and other chemicals to the small and medium scale refineries along the Indo-Myanmar border to convert the poppy into synthetic drugs”.
He then quoted the UN Office on Drugs and Crime which said , “India has a well-developed chemical industry, which produces substantial quantities of acetic anhydride, ephedrine, pseudo-ephedrine, potassium permanganate and many other precursor chemicals. In spite of precursor control legislation and procedures being in place, several cases of diversions of significant quantities of precursor chemicals have occurred in recent years…. availability of ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine in India is of grave concern to Indian law enforcement authorities”.
“It appears that various fake chemical companies send chemicals to Golden Triangle- mainly Myanmar through North East region and the after poppy’s conversion into synthetic drugs, it comes to the same North East region only to go farther into mainland India”.
Justice Lodh has opined that to combat the drugs menace in the region, these fake chemical companies should be taken care of effectively by the concerned authorities. This is easier as all of them are functioning mostly from Indian territory”.
“Once this precursor chemical supply is stopped the drugs refineries will dry up considerably and that with some more holistic anti-drugs approaches the situation will certainly go for change”, he has said.
(Also published in Tripura Times)
