How Myanmar is turning into major transit point to smuggle Gold into India

The shiny metal comes in as biscuits with no mark of origin from neighboring Myanmar. When militant outfits in the northeast started laying down arms five-six years ago, the parallel economy that depended on them took a hit. Arms smuggling had been big across the India-Myanmar border. The routes were in place. So were the networks of carriers. All that was needed was a new product. So a switch was made – from AK-47s to gold.

“Gold is the biggest contraband from across the Myanmar border right now,” T Bijando Singh, superintendent of the Imphal division of customs and stationed at Moreh along the Myanmar border, told TOI. Gold from Myanmar enters India as biscuits, each weighing 166g and with no mark of origin, from deposits in Kachin and Kayin states and the four regions of Mandalay, Sagaing, Bago, and Tanintharyi. “Gold consignments change hands very quickly,” Singh said.

The first stop is Imphal, from where the consignments are sent out – by road through Dimapur in Nagaland or Silchar in Assam and then by rail or air to Kolkata or New Delhi. From these points, it is distributed to other parts of the country. Most gold seizures by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) have been from Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, and Delhi, which are big consumption centers of smuggled gold. And the gold is of high quality – with a purity of 99.76%.

The latest available figures say that customs seized 3,223 kg gold worth Rs 974 crore in 2017-18. A DRI report adds that smuggled gold that ends up being seized accounts for just 5-10% of the total illegal trade – which means that even by conservative estimates, the gold smuggling market in India is worth at least Rs 9,000 crore.

Driving this gold rush are three factors. Myanmar’s gold is cheaper, at least Rs 400-500 lower per gram than Indian gold. Import duties in India are high – 10% customs duty and 3% GST. And while Myanmar does not allow trade of gold in its native form, the product’s demand is the highest in India. Sources say a share of the gold exported by India to the Middle East is from the stash that is originally smuggled in from Myanmar.

India and Myanmar share a 1,643-km-long border, along with four Indian states – Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh. Two routes that cut through this border – the age-old Tamu-Moreh-Imphal trajectory in Manipur, which goes through a vast expanse of the unguarded but nearly inaccessible border area, and the Zokhatwar route in Mizoram, which lies right by the international border – are popular for trade and transit, both legal and illegal. On the route from Tamu in Myanmar to Moreh in Manipur, there is a security check post every 30 km from Moreh to Imphal. Yet, all smuggling cartels prefer the Moreh route.

It’s not surprising. For decades, the sleepy town of Moreh has existed on two planes – one of aspiration and another of reality. Given its location, right along the India-Myanmar border, it has been the springboard for the government’s grand plans of cross-border economic diplomacy with Southeast Asia. On the ground, however, the only flourishing economic activity remains smuggling – for the same reasons that government after government has fostered plans to turn Moreh into an economic hub, the launchpad for the Look East or Act East policy, however one names it.

The Assam Rifles, which is the designated border guarding force for border deploys only a few of its 46 battalions for guarding the border. The rest is engaged in counter-insurgency operations
“Moreh is the most favoured entry point for contraband from Myanmar. It is helped along by low-rung officials of the Myanmar army which, in turn, is controlled by the country’s ethnic armed groups,” said Brigadier (retired) Ranjit Borthakur, an intelligence expert in the region. For those living here, it is a consistent source of employment. “Most carriers in Moreh are locals,” added Singh. “The rest are all from northern India, most from Rajasthan and nearby areas, who have found easy work doing this.”

Myanmar lies at the crossroad between China, India and southeast Asia – right in the middle of the points of supply and demand for objects as innocuous as cheap cigarettes to “exotic” animals and, a surprise entrant, high-end drones.

Smuggling trails over the past year have led as far as Chennai, Mumbai, Pune and Ahmedabad – and these are only the points up to which the DRI has been able to trace the network.

An enduring contraband from across the border, however, has been drugged. From high-grade heroin to low-grade brown sugar, synthetic party drugs like World is Yours and Yaba, the source is the infamous Golden Triangle of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos, known locally as Sop Ruak. A reverse flow is flourishing as well. “We have information that the village of Joupi (close to the Myanmar border) has turned into a poppy cultivation ground. Some patches have been destroyed by the government but many more remains. Heroin (made from the resin of poppy plants) from these farms is now being smuggled into Myanmar,” a security official associated with counter-insurgency operations in the region said.

But what makes things so easy for smuggling operations? For starters, the Free Movement Regime between India and Myanmar allows people living along the border to travel up to 16 km on either side without visa restrictions. Because the two countries are not hostile neighbors, the presence of border guarding forces is sporadic. Assam Rifles is the only force deployed, in small patches, along the border – which is demarcated but unfenced. Finally, there is the difficult terrain – which locals have deep knowledge of and do not find hard to negotiate.

Courtesy: TOI

Image Courtesy: TIMESOFINDIA.COM