Operation Trident: NCB Raids 38 Sites in Assam, Mizoram, Manipur

The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) has broken both the transport arm and the money arm of a cross-border drug syndicate in the North East through Operation Trident, a single synchronised action mounted in the early hours of 23 October 2026. Thirty-eight composite teams drawn from central agencies and the police of three States moved at the same moment on 38 addresses identified in advance in Assam, Mizoram and Manipur.

How the strike was put together

The bureau worked under one command with Mizoram Police and the Enforcement Directorate (ED). Days of pooled intelligence, joint target-mapping and tactical briefings came first, and every search, questioning and financial audit was timed to begin together so that no suspect could get away and no asset could be moved out of sight. The addresses took in both city hubs and sensitive border stretches: Aizawl and Champhai in Mizoram, the Indo-Myanmar trading town of Zokhawthar, linked operative bases at Churachandpur in Manipur and the Cachar transit corridor of Assam.

What the action produced

The syndicate behind the raids

Investigators had traced the network to a Myanmar-based kingpin, Thangcintuang, known also as Chintuang or Tluanga, who is wanted in more than 10 cases registered under the NDPS Act by the NCB, Champhai Police and Mizoram Excise. He ran consignments of methamphetamine and heroin down the Myanmar-Mizoram-Manipur-Assam-Tripura corridor into mainland India and on to Bangladesh. Earlier rounds of the inquiry had already taken out his main pillars: the facilitator Vungkhanthawna, later detained under the PIT-NDPS Act; the chief hawala operator Lalrampari, arrested on 08.08.2024; and Abu Saleh alias Saifuddin, the logistics head for the Assam corridor, picked up at Cachar on 20.11.2025. Financial profiling and digital forensics from those arrests pointed to a wider web of shell firms and money mules, which is what Operation Trident was built to hit.

The policy behind it

Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Amit Shah said on X that the agencies had smashed an international narco-cartel, and congratulated the anti-narcotics team made up of central agencies and the police of the three States. The syndicate had used what the authorities call the Death Triangle Corridor across the borders of India, Myanmar and Bangladesh. The operation follows the Vision Document on Narcotics Control (2026-2029) and the stated aim of rooting out every drug network by 31 December 2029, a move away from counting seizures towards dismantling networks and choking the money that keeps them alive.