The Indian Coast Guard and the Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) intercepted an Iranian dhow in the Arabian Sea west of Lakshadweep on September 25 and recovered about 526 kg of heroin and methamphetamine, officials said this week. The agencies put the international market value at more than Rs 3,000 crore. Five Pakistani nationals on board were detained, and the boat was escorted to Mumbai, The Free Press Journal reported.
Gujarat Samachar described it as the largest operation of its kind the two agencies have carried out together. The Coast Guard said it tracked the vessel using ships and aircraft on a tip about a suspicious boat, then chased and boarded it, according to The Federal. Officials have not named the crew or said who the consignment was meant for.
Why a Gujarat agency was working off Kerala’s coast
The interception took place more than a thousand kilometres south of Gujarat’s shoreline. Gujarat ATS has spent the past few years building a maritime intelligence role, feeding inputs to the Coast Guard’s western region, and the pattern of its joint seizures shows smugglers moving further out to sea.
In April 2025, a Coast Guard ship acting on Gujarat ATS input intercepted a transshipment attempt near the International Maritime Boundary Line off Gujarat. The traffickers dumped over 300 kg of methamphetamine, worth about Rs 1,800 crore, and fled back across the line, according to the Defence Ministry’s release on PIB. The recovered packets were brought to Porbandar. This month’s seizure is about 75% larger by weight and was made far from the boundary line, where boats can no longer turn back to Pakistani waters in minutes.
Gujarat’s coastline, the longest of any Indian state, has long been a target for these routes. Readers will remember the nearly 3,000 kg of heroin that the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence found in containers at Mundra port in 2021. Since then, enforcement has shifted from ports to the open sea, and seizures now happen at the mid-sea handover point rather than on the dock.
What it means for Gujarat
- Fishing communities in Porbandar, Okha, Jakhau and Mangrol see the most direct effect. Their boats work the same waters that smugglers use for mid-sea handovers, and drug packets have washed ashore on the Kutch coast in past years, drawing police checks on landing sites.
- Local drug markets: synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine and mephedrone (MD) that get past the coast end up in Gujarat’s own cities, where police file MD cases regularly.
- Enforcement capacity: the case shows a state police unit supplying the intelligence behind a deep-sea interception, a role usually left to central agencies.
What to watch
The joint interrogation in Mumbai should establish where the dhow loaded its cargo, where it planned to hand it over, and whether an Indian receiver was waiting. Gujarat Samachar reported that the Narcotics Control Bureau and other central agencies have joined the probe. If investigators trace a landing point on the Gujarat or Maharashtra coast, expect follow-up arrests on shore, as happened after earlier seizures.
The Rs 3,000 crore figure is an estimate based on international street prices, which agencies use for large seizures; it does not reflect what the smugglers paid.
Sources: The Free Press Journal, Gujarat Samachar, The Federal, PIB (Ministry of Defence)
This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.