Thirty-six kilograms of heroin — enough to feed a city's addiction supply chain for weeks — was pulled off the streets of Punjab on Saturday, 7 November 2026, as Counter Intelligence (CI) Amritsar dismantled a cross-border narcotics smuggling network and arrested four individuals, including one juvenile. The Chief Minister's Office of Punjab announced the breakthrough, attributing it to the continuing push under Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann to make Punjab a safe, secure, and drug-free state.

What CI Amritsar uncovered at the border

The operation targeted a network smuggling narcotics across the India-Pakistan border into Punjab — one of the most active and dangerous corridors for heroin trafficking in South Asia. CI Amritsar, the Punjab Police unit dedicated to intelligence-led counter-operations against cross-border crime, identified and neutralised the gang, recovering the entire 36 kg heroin consignment from the suspects' possession. The inclusion of a juvenile in the arrested group underscores a troubling dimension of the trade: recruiters increasingly drawing in minors to carry or facilitate shipments, calculating that young age may soften legal consequences.

'Yudh Nashian Virudh' — the campaign behind the crackdown

This seizure sits within the framework of Yudh Nashian Virudh ('War Against Drugs'), the flagship anti-narcotics drive launched by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab after it came to power in March 2022. CM Mann made drug eradication a defining promise of his administration, citing the disproportionate toll addiction has taken on the state's youth and border communities. The campaign has combined intensified police operations, intelligence coordination, and community outreach. CI Amritsar has been a key operational arm, specifically mandated to cut supply chains at the source — the porous border rather than just street-level distribution.

Punjab's long war on heroin and the border corridor

Punjab has grappled with cross-border heroin smuggling for decades. Its geography — sharing a long boundary with Pakistan — makes it the primary entry point for heroin moving from Afghanistan through Pakistani networks into India. High addiction rates, particularly among young men in rural districts, have been both a public-health crisis and a law-enforcement challenge. Successive state governments have announced crackdowns; what distinguishes the current phase is the stated policy of systematically targeting smuggling networks at the intelligence level rather than relying solely on road-check seizures. The 36 kg recovery in this single operation is significant in scale, representing a substantial consignment by any metric of the illicit trade.

The CMO's post carried the hashtag #YudhNashianVirudh, signalling that this arrest is being framed as a campaign milestone rather than an isolated police action — a deliberate communication strategy to reinforce the government's anti-drug credentials ahead of an ongoing series of operations.