The Economic Times link was not working so this piece is a re-worded version of the times and other articles linking to the same operation that have been published in the past day. Now, the Indian Coast Guard has seized 526 kg of heroin and methamphetamine from an Iranian dhow off Lakshadweep. Five Pakistanis were arrested. The officials calculated the consignment valued at ₹3,000 crore more than $300 million, depending on exchange rates.

This is the sequence that was reported. The intelligence inputs were given to the Coast Guard and Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad and central agencies were also engaged. Then the ships and aircraft shadowed the ship and a hot pursuit ensued before boarding. It was done on Sept. 25 after about a 16-day period, according to Open magazine. ThePrint recognised the dhow as the Azad and put it in the Exclusive Economic Zone of India. The boat and crew are said to have been brought to Mumbai where they are being detained by the ATS, Narcotics Control Bureau and other agencies for questioning. Home Minister Amit Shah publicly lauded the operation.

The most important figure is value/gram/kilogram! Divide ₹3,000 crore by 526 kg and you get about ₹5.7 crore per kg. This is consistent with previous catches, indicating the valuation approach is similar. According to Business Standard sources, the seizure of 307.5 kg worth of drugs valued at ₹1,800 crore in Gujarat in April 2025 was the largest at sea this time. A total of 86 kg of opium worth ₹600 crore was found in April 2024, and 14 people from Pakistan were arrested. The value of this reported in three sea operations has increased from ₹600 crore to ₹1,800 crore to ₹3,000 crore. The above chart illustrates climb.

The valuations aren't without a caveat. The figures quoted by the agency, international wholesale prices are not what the drugs would fetch in any Delhi or Mumbai market. However, the tone is set. There are more loads moving through and the traffickers know that the risk is worth it.

This can go as far back as a record posted late last year. Indian agencies have found approximately 3,300 kg of narcotics, primarily hashish, on a boat that had arrived from Iran's Chabahar port. At the time, Narcotics Control Bureau director general had stated that smugglers were taking advantage of the weak Indian coast. In May 2023, the Navy and NCB collected 2500 kg from the Kerala coast. Given this past, the weight of 526 kg sounds fairly light. Its major importance comes from its composition. Heroin and methamphetamine are far more valuable per kilogram than hashish and are the drugs behind the current change in the trade.

That's because of the global backdrop. UN drug agency estimates opium production in Afghanistan dropped by nearly half in 2022 as a result of the Taliban's ban on opium cultivation. The synthetic drugs have stepped in and the ephedra plant grown wild in Afghanistan can be used to make methamphetamine, which can be made cheaply. Both are being transported via the old Golden Crescent routes from Afghanistan and Iran through the coast of Makran in Iran and Pakistan. Dhows sail from that coast, and may travel to the Indian Ocean within days. The same networks supply, amongst other markets, East Africa, the Gulf, South Asia and as far afield as Australia and Europe. India is a transit and consuming country, and it's in the heart of the map!

Why dhows? They're common, inexpensive, ubiquitous, and indistinguishable from real traffic. Thousands of them ferry perfectly legal cargo from Gujarat to the Gulf and from the Gulf to the Iranian coast and Mundra and Kandla see huge trade in and out. Any lawful boat requiring a stop and search will have to be stopped and searched and it will take time and money. It's a hard balance to strike for the Coast Guard, who have to put the end to the criminal trade without killing the good one.

The other concern is where. The International Maritime Boundary Line off Gujarat used to be the place where interceptions were concentrated. This occurred further west and south, out further. It indicates that the smugglers are extending their range, possibly to evade patrols off the Gujarat coast or possibly to land further south. The Kerala seizure in 2023 was in the same direction. The surveillance area is much greater than it once was, wherever the drugs are supposed to go.

There is also a security aspect and it can't be avoided though it needs to be dealt with carefully. Political reaction will be determined by the crew's nationality. The Indian government has come across assertions that the maritime narcotics trade is being used to finance crime and terror organizations and to inflict damage on the youth of India. The claims are difficult to confirm from the outside and no one has yet published anything to link this crew to anybody. The interrogations may answer that. Who owned the dhow, who paid for the cargo and who awaited on the Indian side will determine whether it becomes headline news or a case that changes nothing.

The economics of enforcement must be given the same consideration. This scale of seizure takes hundreds of crores off board the criminals' criminal account, but margins are so high that they can sustain losses. Even if one load in a number of loads makes it through, the business still makes money. But it isn't the boats that need to be attacked, it's the buyers and the handlers on the shore that are to blame, not the arithmetic. That involves tracking hawala networks, portside connections, payment patterns and then passing them on to other countries such as those in the Gulf and East Africa that are also on those sea routes.

India has demonstrated its ability to locate and intercept these ships and the track record from 2023 onwards is proof of that. It has yet to demonstrate that they are being caught changes the flow. More fish taken in a year can be due to better policing, or a bigger trade, or both. It's likely that both were the honest reading.