Jammu, May 18 -- Illicit narcotics trade is thriving now on crime, terrorism and geopolitics
By T N Ashok
India's first seizure of Captagon - the notorious "jihadi drug" of the Syrian conflict - is more than a sensational narcotics bust. It is a warning flare. Beneath the Rs.182-crore seizure at Mundra Port and Delhi lies a far darker story: the merging of global terror finance, synthetic narcotics, organised crime and a new transnational drug economy that increasingly sees India not merely as a transit point, but as a strategic battleground.
For years, Captagon belonged to the grim geography of West Asia - a pill swallowed by fighters in ruined Syrian cities, trafficked through Gulf routes, and whispered about by intelligence agencies t...