NCB chairs Assam coordination meet on dismantling drug networks

The Narcotics Control Bureau led Assam's third quarterly State-Level Joint Co-ordination Committee meeting in Guwahati on Saturday, bringing together central and state enforcement agencies to discuss how to take apart drug trafficking networks rather than treat seizures in isolation.

The meeting was held at Police Headquarters and chaired by R. Sudhakar, the NCB's Deputy Director General for the North Eastern Region. An NCB official said it had been convened to strengthen inter-agency coordination and to deal with emerging narcotics threats.

Discussions covered Assam's narcotics situation, trafficking routes that agencies say are changing, operational difficulties and significant cases under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act. Officials laid stress on a network-centric approach, meaning investigations that follow money, communications and associates in order to dismantle an entire chain rather than stop at the people found with a consignment.

Intelligence tools and Operation Trident

The official said participants also talked about making better use of the NIDAN portal, NATGRID and inputs from the Financial Intelligence Unit to develop leads and support investigations.

The meeting highlighted Operation Trident, described as a joint effort by the NCB, the Enforcement Directorate and the Mizoram Police. According to the NCB account carried by The Assam Tribune and The Shillong Times, 38 teams carried out simultaneous searches at 38 locations across three North-eastern states. The statement did not list the three states or give a seizure or arrest tally for that operation in Saturday's briefing.

Officers from the National Investigation Agency, the Enforcement Directorate, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, the Border Security Force, the Central Reserve Police Force, the Sashastra Seema Bal, the Railway Protection Force, Customs, the Income Tax Department, the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau, the state Anti-Narcotics Task Force and other agencies attended, an NCB official said. Superintendents of Police from 13 districts of Assam that the bureau described as sensitive were also present. The SPs shared district-level trends and the difficulties their forces face on the ground. The NCB statement did not name those 13 districts.

A standing coordination forum

The Joint Co-ordination Committee is a quarterly forum. Saturday's sitting was the third such Assam meeting of the current cycle. Similar NCB-led meetings are held in other states; the Assam Tribune report noted that Rajasthan's third quarterly meeting of 2026 took place in Jaipur last month.

The Guwahati discussions ended with what the official described as a renewed pledge to share intelligence, coordinate raids, follow financial trails and break organised trafficking networks in Assam, in line with the national "Nasha Mukt Bharat" campaign.

No new statewide seizure figures or a list of pending cases were released after the meeting. The value of Saturday's sitting, as presented by the NCB, was the presence of both central agencies and district police heads in one room and the focus on following entire networks, including through financial intelligence, rather than on any single overnight haul.