Capital Mid West growing as ‘narcotics hub’

KATHMANDU, FEB 23 -
A higher number of mid-western people are getting involved in the smuggling of hard drugs such as hashish and brown sugar along the Rupahidiya-Nepalgunj road, a break from the otherwise regular peddling route—the Raksaul-Birgunj strip, police said.
The shift, which came to notice through police operations spanning eight months to a year, brings forth the vulnerability of unemployed youths in mid-western districts to drug smuggling and related activities. According to a police estimate, over 90 percent arrests in trans-border drug peddling cases have occurred in the Rupahidiya-Nepalgunj border in the past few months.
Of the nine smuggling cases that the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) is currently probing, eight are on the peddlers arrested along the Rupahidiya-Nepalgunj route.
Since the highlands of Rukum, Rolpa and Salyan, among other districts, are considered fertile for “fine” marijuana production, the possibility of the region emerging as a new drug hub is high, officials at the NCB under the Nepal Police have warned.
Drugs produced in Baglung and surrounding districts are also transported to India via the open border linking Nepalgunj with Rupahidiya. Professional peddlers assign unemployed youths of poverty-stricken families to the task.
According to DSP Rabindra Regmi of the NCB, the same people in the region who are used to transport Nepali hashish to India are lured to carry heroin and other hard drugs that are in high demand in cities including Nepalgunj, Kathmandu and Pokhara.
DSP Regmi attributes their transformation into budding drug smugglers to low literacy rate, trauma of the decade-long armed conflict and rampant unemployment. “These people were first lured into war, which went in vain,” he said. “The professional smugglers operating as a racket in the region lured them to quick money by increasing the production of hashish in their fields. Slowly, they are being enticed to illicitly transport the drugs.”
The data applies to the transportation of brown sugar by local youths. According to DSP Regmi, another route the peddlers have chosen to transport hashish is via eastern towns close to the Indian regions of Sikkim, Darjeeling and other
places in West Bengal.
Although Nepali hashish is first taken to India, it is not the final destination. According to DSP Regmi, the Indian territory is also being used as transit, to European and American cities. Nepal-made hashish is said to be in high demand in Japan. Police estimate that 180 kg brown sugar is imported to Nepal from India alone.