The Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) on Friday held its annual RN Kao Memorial Lecture, with Union home minister Amit Shah delivering the address on the theme ‘Narcotics: A Borderless Threat, A Collective Responsibility’.
‘Not a law-and-order issue alone’
Union home minister Amit Shah delivering the RN Kao Memorial Lecture on the theme ‘Narcotics: A Borderless Threat, A Collective Responsibility’, on Friday. (HT Photo)
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Shah stressed that drug trafficking was not merely a law and order issue but one with lasting damage to society and future generations. He warned that drug abuse causes permanent harm to the human body, and that drug money fuels terrorist networks, criminal organisations, and a parallel economy.
He cautioned that if nations did not act together now, the damage caused by drugs would be irreversible within a decade.
The home minister called for a unified global legal framework to tackle the issue, arguing that inconsistencies in the designation of controlled substances and varying penalties for trafficking allowed drug cartels to exploit gaps in policy.
He also emphasised the importance of real-time intelligence sharing to intercept narcotics shipments and detain drug kingpins, noting that India had successfully repatriated more than 40 transnational criminals in the last two years with support from friendly nations.
Appeal to countries
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Addressing ambassadors and diplomats from over 40 countries present at the event, Shah urged them to join India's efforts in the global fight against drugs.
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Addressing ambassadors and diplomats from over 40 countries present at the event, Shah urged them to join India's efforts in the global fight against drugs.
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He said a world of 8 billion people, 195 nations, and 250,000 kilometres of international borders could not tackle the drug problem through fragmented approaches, and that collective resolve, coordinated action, and cross-border operations were essential.
He added that the battle against drugs must rise above geopolitical differences, and called for uniform laws, standardised punishments, extradition of drug kingpins, and robust intelligence sharing among nations.
The lecture series was instituted in 2007 to honour the memory of Rameshwar Nath Kao, the founder of R&AW.
Shah noted that India had set a national goal to achieve a Drug Free India by 2047 under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and that Indian security agencies had prepared a roadmap to eradicate drug syndicates. He affirmed that under India's zero-tolerance policy on drugs, not a single gram of narcotics would be allowed to enter the country or pass through it as a transit route.
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The event was also attended by members of Kao's family, former Secretaries of R&AW, and officials from India's security establishment.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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Home/India News/Amit Shah calls for global war on drugs, says cross-border operations essential
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