ED Crackdown on Narco-Hawala Operators Across Mizoram and Manipur
Imphal, October 25: The Enforcement Directorate has intensified action against a narco-hawala network spanning Mizoram and Manipur. The probe has led to six arrests, the freezing of 1,424 bank accounts and the provisional attachment of property worth Rs 26.01 crore.
The agency's Aizawl and Imphal sub-zonal offices conducted coordinated searches on October 23 under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002. Locations searched included Aizawl, Champhai and Lengtlai in Mizoram, and Churachandpur in Manipur. The searches were linked to three separate cases involving cross-border drug trafficking from Myanmar and the hawala settlement of drug income.
The ED acted in coordination with the Narcotics Control Bureau and the Mizoram Police. Parallel operations were also carried out against the trafficking network the same day.
During the crackdown, the agency froze 1,424 accounts linked to narco-trade and narco-hawala operators in Mizoram and Manipur. It also provisionally attached property valued at Rs 17.82 crore held by narco-hawala operators in Mizoram. Assets worth Rs 8.19 crore had been frozen earlier, which means secured property now exceeds Rs 26 crore.
Six persons were arrested under Section 19 of the PMLA, with three arrests in each state. Four more accused, who are already lodged in judicial custody in narcotics cases, are the subject of production-for-arrest applications being heard by the Special Court in Mizoram.
The ED's investigation draws on three First Information Reports registered under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985. In March 2025, police in Champhai's Zokhawthar seized 4.722 kg of heroin concealed in 440 soap cases, which was being carried to Aizawl for a Myanmar-based supplier. In August 2025, NCB Agartala seized 49.101 kg of methamphetamine tablets and 40 grams of heroin from a convoy on NH-6A near Sailing in Mizoram. That consignment had been brought from Chinthuang in Myanmar for delivery at the Damchhera-Kanhmun border. In July 2026, Churachandpur police seized 2.413 kg of brown sugar and Rs 31.43 lakh in cash. The money was the sale proceeds of drugs supplied from Myanmar and was being gathered for suppliers in Churachandpur.
The three cases were found to be interlinked. Earnings from drugs manufactured in Manipur, Mizoram, Assam and Tripura were collected through a single set of bank accounts in Champhai, Aizawl and Lengtlai and then settled with suppliers in Myanmar.
The Northeast shares a porous 1,643-kilometre border with Myanmar and has become a principal land corridor for drugs produced in the Golden Triangle. Heroin and methamphetamine tablets entering Mizoram and Manipur are consumed locally and also routed through Assam to other parts of India and Bangladesh. Drug proceeds from this chain are returned to border towns in Mizoram to settle accounts with Myanmar-based suppliers.