On the "Southern Route": how a ₹3,000-crore bust in the Arabian Sea exposes a well-worn Pakistan-Iran drug pipeline

The Indian Coast Guard, working with the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Gujarat, intercepted a suspicious Iranian dhow in the Arabian Sea, west of Lakshadweep, on September 25 and seized approximately 526 kg of heroin and methamphetamine valued at more than ₹3,000 crore, the Indian Coast Guard said. Five Pakistani nationals operating the vessel were apprehended. The bust is one of the largest of its kind, but it is not an isolated case, it is the latest data point on a maritime drug pipeline that security agencies have tracked for years, running from Afghanistan’s poppy fields through Pakistan and Iran and out across the Arabian Sea.

How the operation unfolded

Acting on actionable intelligence, the Indian Coast Guard carried out sustained sea-air surveillance to track the dhow before launching a pursuit and boarding it. The seized contraband comprised high-grade heroin and methamphetamine. The dhow, its crew and the narcotics have since been escorted under armed guard to Mumbai, where they will be handed over for joint interrogation and further legal proceedings involving multiple agencies. The Indian Coast Guard described the seizure as a blow to the financial networks of international drug syndicates and a step toward preventing synthetic drugs from reaching India’s mainland, framing the operation as a force multiplier for the government’s Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan, its nationwide anti-drug campaign.

Where the drugs come from: the Golden Crescent

The narcotics moving along this route mostly originate in the Golden Crescent, the drug-producing belt spanning Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Afghanistan’s opium poppy cultivation has historically formed the backbone of this economy, feeding heroin production that Pakistan’s own Anti-Narcotics Force has documented moving through the region alongside opium and hashish. Synthetic drugs like methamphetamine have increasingly supplemented this trade, since they don’t require agricultural cultivation and can be manufactured in makeshift labs closer to the coast, a shift reflected in this week’s mixed heroin-methamphetamine haul.

How the drugs reach the sea: Pakistan’s geography as middleman

Pakistan’s location makes it the connecting piece in this chain. It shares a long, porous border with landlocked Afghanistan and has direct access to the Arabian Sea through ports including Karachi, Port Qasim and Gwadar. The mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border and the tribal belt of the former North-West Frontier Province offer natural cover for moving narcotics overland from Afghan production areas down to Pakistan’s coast, where consignments are broken into smaller loads for onward transport by sea.

The Pakistani state’s own agencies have a documented history in this trade. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is widely understood to have helped establish the Afghanistan-based heroin trade during the years of Taliban rule, generating large profits that were used, among other things, to fund subversive activities directed at India. Reports on the narco-terror ecosystem describe how drug trafficking from the Pakistan-Afghanistan region continues to feed terror financing today, alongside organised crime and domestic instability within Pakistan itself, a dimension that is why this week’s operation was run jointly with an anti-terrorism squad rather than narcotics police alone.

Where Iran fits in

Pakistan’s Makran coast, in Balochistan, does not stand alone. It forms a continuous coastal rim with Iran’s own stretch of the Makran, and together the two coastlines provide the small coves and non-descript harbours from which smuggling dhows typically depart. Vessels flagged as Iranian, and crews of mixed Iranian and Pakistani nationality, have repeatedly turned up in these interdictions, exactly as in this week’s case. In an earlier seizure, the NCB and Indian Navy recovered 200 kg of heroin from an Iranian vessel crewed by six Iranian nationals, with the drugs traced back through a chain running from Afghanistan into Pakistan before being loaded onto the boat in a mid-sea transfer off the Pakistani coast. Investigators in that case found the heroin packets carried distinct seal markings, “Scorpion” and “Dragon”, identifying rival Afghan and Pakistani cartel networks. The heavy volume of legitimate shipping traffic in the northern Arabian Sea gives smugglers useful cover, since a single dhow among hundreds of fishing and cargo vessels is not automatically conspicuous, which is part of why sustained sea-air surveillance, of the kind used in this week’s operation, is necessary to isolate a target.

Where the “Southern Route” leads

From the Makran coast, what the UN Office on Drugs and Crime designates the “southern trafficking route” fans out across the Arabian Sea toward multiple destinations. One branch runs toward India’s western coastline, particularly Gujarat, the closest point of arrival, and explains why Gujarat’s ATS has become a recurring partner in these operations. Other branches continue further, toward Sri Lanka and the Maldives, and onward to East African countries including Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique, where unflagged dhows have reportedly landed cargo with relative ease. Investigators have also noted some shift in smuggling patterns from the Makran coast toward East Africa’s “Swahili coast,” suggesting traffickers adapt their landing points as enforcement tightens in any one area. India’s Narcotics Control Bureau has separately investigated rackets in which Pakistani traffickers, some jailed in Sri Lanka, used Sri Lankan and Maldivian couriers to push narcotics into India by sea, showing the network’s reach extends through intermediary countries as well as directly to Indian shores.

A pattern of repeated seizures

This week’s bust fits a long run of similar interceptions. In February 2024, a joint Indian Navy operation recovered 3,089 kg of charas, 158 kg of methamphetamine and 25 kg of morphine from the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, in a consignment traced to the Makran coast. In April 2025, over 300 kg of suspected methamphetamine, sourced from Pakistan, was seized off Jakhau in Gujarat. Past investigations have also uncovered cases where accused traffickers were found channelling proceeds specifically toward funding activities against India, tying the drug trade directly to security concerns beyond addiction and public health. One network described in earlier reporting was said to be run by a Pakistan-based figure referred to as the “Pablo Escobar” of the Golden Crescent, controlling much of the Southern Route’s traffic from the Makran coast to India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and parts of Africa.

The bigger picture

Security analysts frame the threat along this route as two-fold. The financial dimension is that narcotics profits moving through this corridor are widely believed to help fund groups and activities hostile to India, which is why operations like this week’s are handled jointly by coast guard, intelligence and anti-terrorism agencies rather than treated as ordinary smuggling cases. The operational dimension is that India’s western coastline, and the broader Arabian Sea, has become the primary maritime route for heroin, hashish and methamphetamine originating from the Golden Crescent, a mirror to how the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea have separately become a corridor for methamphetamine from Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle. With an 11,000-km coastline to defend, India has increasingly positioned itself as a frontline maritime security actor against these networks, and this week’s ₹3,000-crore seizure, coming from an Iranian-flagged vessel with a Pakistani crew, is a reminder of how firmly that frontline runs along the same Pakistan-Iran axis it has for years.