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Everything about that night was usual for the residents of a small rented house on the second floor of a building at Vennala in the heart of Kochi city, until they heard a knock on the door.
It was past midnight, but the family of four – a young man, his live-in partner and two children – were still awake. He opened the door and found a group of men, clad in casuals, at his doorstep. Soon he would learn he was trapped, for the men were members of the District Anti-Narcotics Special Action Force (DANSAF) of the Kochi City police.
It did not take much for the undercover cops to find what they were looking for – 50 g of suspected methylenedioxymethamphetamine or MDMA, a lab-made synthetic drug. An eerie silence overwhelmed the house. The joyfulness of the two children – a five-year-old girl and her toddler brother – could not overcome the uneasiness that filled the air.
“He cooperated with the police as he realised he was caught. The cops tried to keep the atmosphere calm. They did not handcuff him as they didn’t want to frighten the children. Some of them even played with the children as others completed the search and arrest procedures,” narrates an officer.
No dearth of drama
The drama was yet to unfold. As the police were completing the documentation process, the man bolted out of the house, only to be chased down by the cops. One of them fractured his leg in the melee. The accused is cooling his heels in jail. The episode is one among the many dramatic moments the anti-narcotic wing of the Kerala Police experiences regularly.
The Vennala incident is among the 6,914 cases registered under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act in Ernakulam, the commercial hub of Kerala, in 2025. And the man was one of the 7,463 people caught last year in the district in drug-related offences. The contraband seized from his house added to the 3.4 kg of suspected MDMA confiscated from the district. The volume of suspected ganja seized during the last year almost touched a troubling tonne – 986.35 kg.
What the numbers say
While 1,268 cases were registered in Kochi in 2020 and 1,262 in 2021, it went up to 3,901 in 2022. The numbers almost doubled next year to 6,718, only to fall to 4,512 in 2024, and then peak at 6,914 last year, as per data accessed from Kochi City and Ernakulam Rural police.
Kochi is closely followed by Thiruvananthapuram (3,882 cases), Malappuram (3,792), Kozhikode (3,447) and Kollam (2,963), according to the State Crime Records Bureau figures till October. The pattern is similar, with the number of cases going up manifold in the past five years. The police say the number of cases registered annually reflects only a tip of the real crisis.
“We follow up a tip-off only after verifying it to the maximum extent possible. Even then, we manage to catch one offender when we pursue 15 leads. It is often difficult to trace a small quantity of a substance even if the intelligence is correct because the offenders can easily hide or destroy it,” reveals a member of the anti-drugs squad.
Officers chasing drug traffickers say the peddlers have been changing their modus operandi quite frequently. “While ganja is mostly trafficked from Odisha, synthetic drugs are mainly sourced from Bengaluru and Delhi. Some foreign students are suspected of being engaged in the large-scale production of synthetic drugs. We have also come across cases of peddlers sourcing synthetic drugs from abroad,” K.A. Abdul Salam, assistant commissioner, Narcotics wing, Kochi City police says.
Newer techniques
“Of late, it’s found that ganja peddlers are breaking away from traditional methods following increased surveillance at railway stations. Some bring it by road. Cases of traffickers throwing packets containing large quantities of contraband out of moving trains to designated places have also been found. In one case, ganja was found stuffed in bicycle tyre tubes,” a police source reveals.
In December, an Excise team had arrested a 35-year-old man from Muvattupuzha for allegedly selling synthetic drugs stuffed in juice straws. His modus operandi was to drop the straws in public places and share the image of the location with his customers.
When it comes to synthetic drugs, the police have identified a five-layer domestic network of trafficking. “At the rock bottom of the network are the gangs reportedly operating in Bengaluru and Delhi. From there, bulk dealers procure the stuff in quantities of around 150-200 g. They sell it to other peddlers in small packets of 5 g or 10 g. That is again split into small units of 1 g and sold to the next layer of the peddlers. They sell it to individuals or small groups of users,” an officer who was involved in several raids says.
Students often fall prey to the menace. They first become users and then peddlers to fund the new habit. The peddlers and the consumers reportedly use encrypted messaging platforms to fix the deals.
“Often peddlers drop the substance at a point and send the location to the user. The delay in obtaining details from communication platforms often acts as a hindrance to investigation. Another major challenge is to produce witnesses before the court. Even when a seizure is made from a public place, people hesitate to come forward as witnesses, fearing consequences,” the officer says. While the accused were convicted in 18,596 cases in the State till October 2025, according to the available data, 452 were acquitted.
Deadly recreation
Easy availability of drugs is a major contributor to the menace, according to psychiatrists. “The ease in hiding the contraband too has led to an increase in the number of multiple-substance addiction cases. People often start using drugs for recreation, only to become regular users. It leads to dependence and in turn peddling. Youngsters from middle-class, and often dysfunctional, families are the easy prey,” says Anoop Vincent, president, Kerala State branch, Indian Psychiatric Society.
He cites the case of a Class VIII boy, the son of an alcoholic father and a non-resident Indian (NRI) mother, who became a ganja addict and turned to peddling by the time he was in Class X.
“He came to me when he was 18. He somehow wanted to escape from the world of substance abuse because people were beating him up frequently. He underwent treatment and got rid of the addiction,” Dr. Vincent, also a professor and head of the Psychiatry department of the Sree Narayana Institute of Medical Sciences, Chalakka, near Kunnukara in Ernakulam, says. However, higher expense makes de-addiction treatment inaccessible for the financially weaker, he adds.
He also remembers how a group of people forged his prescription to buy certain psychotropic medicines a few months ago. The police registered a case suo motu. The agonising experience of Akash (name changed to protect identity), a 30-year-old creative professional from Thrissur, validates the views of police and medical experts.
He started using cannabis to escape the trauma caused by ragging in college when he was 18. In the next few years, he found himself an addict and depressed and was eventually driven to a suicide attempt before starting de-addiction therapy. “After dropping out of the engineering college, I moved to Kochi around 2017. By that time drug peddling was very common in Kochi. I never found it difficult to get drugs, though I mostly used cannabis,” Akash says.
He always exercised caution not to purchase the substance in ‘bulk’ to avoid police surveillance. “I used to buy cannabis for a week or two from different people. Users usually never get to know from where a peddler is sourcing the substance,” Akash, who has moved to another city for work, says.
Breaking the shackles
“I come to Kochi sometimes and these days, one can smell cannabis at random points in the city. A lot of young users I have come across are unaware of the medical and socio-legal consequences of drug abuse,” he feels. “Had it not been for the treatment and the support from my doctor and family, I would not have been here to share my experience now,” says Akash, who shrugged off the deadly addiction through sustained therapy and support of those close to him.
Rajeev Jayadevan, convener, research cell of the Kerala unit of the Indian Medical Association, draws attention to the larger public health concerns involved in drug abuse. He lists increased incidents of violence, road accidents, job loss and disruption in family as the common consequences of drug abuse. He also notes that the incidents of needle-sharing and unsafe and high-risk sexual practices among drug users have led to a spike in infections like HIV.
He laments that the lack of manpower and required skill sets in those in the healthcare sector add to the crisis. “Substance use carries certain stigma, but to remove that and to treat addiction as a medical condition requires substantial training and reorientation of healthcare professionals,” he feels.
Rehabilitation, not punishment
The police seem to agree. Amid the rise in cases, the enforcers have been encouraging users arrested with a small quantity of substances to make use of Section 64(A) of the NDPS Act which focusses on rehabilitation rather than punishment. The provision helps people escape prosecution by volunteering to undergo de-addiction treatment from authorised practitioners. Around 40 people have made use of the provision in the Ernakulam district alone last year.
The dark forces luring one to the netherworld of drugs may still be lurking around. The real high is in saying a firm ‘no.’
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