Drug game in Nepal's narco capital

Located in the Nepal-Indian border, the growing sub-metropolitan town of Birgunj in the Parsa District, 145 km south of Kathmandu, has become infamous for drug trafficking.

"We have recently identified more that 1,500 hard drug users in Birgunj. Identity documents aren't required for Nepalese citizens traveling to and from India. Because of the porous border, drugs are readily available here," Ajit Rai, coordinator at the 'Action for Addiction' Center, and a former drug user, told Xinhua.

In Birgunj, along the river banks dividing Nepal from its southern neighbor, you literally walk on a carpet of packets of syringes and ampoules left by drug users.

Here, Xinhua met Om Prakash, in his thirties, a rickshaw driver and father of three.

He is one of the many involved in Nepal's drug game. He worked as a drug courier, smuggling narcotics along the Nepal-India border before becoming an addict himself.

Cocaine, heroin, brown sugar and pharmaceutical drugs are easy to get from Raxual, a town in India that borders Birgunj. It takes Prakash less than 15 minutes to cross the border, buy syringes and morphine from India, return to Nepal, and inject himself in the groin.

There is no need to hide even though the border police are just a hundred meters away.

Despite his addiction and meager earnings, Prakash's family prefer to have him home rather than invest money for his rehabilitation.

"For three months in our rehabilitation center, clients have to pay 20,000 rupees (about 200 U.S. dollars). Not everyone can afford it," Ajit Rai explained.

The "Action for Addiction" rehabilitation center in Birgunj, put up by the non-governmental organization (NGO) Sano Paila, handles about 30 drug addicts. With a 60 percent success rate, the drug addiction treatment is almost "military" in nature.

"Discipline is extremely important for drug addicts," Dr. Rakesh Jha, chairperson of Sano Paila, told Xinhua as he explained the challenges of running a drug rehabilitation center.

"Drug users are from different social and economical backgrounds but once they become addicts the result is the same: they often fall deeper into poverty and are rejected by society," Dr. Jha said.

More dealers are being brought into the police net and some users are finding a way out of their addiction, but Birgunj remains Nepal's hub for both domestic and international drug trafficking.

Around 45 percent of the inmates in Birgunj jail have been serving sentences either for consuming or smuggling drugs, according to the Birgunj Prison Administration.

Out of the total of 1,313 prisoners, 589 are doing time for various drug-related cases. In these last six months, 82 persons, including two females, have been arrested for trafficking drugs along the Nepal-India border. Seventy percent of the drug traffickers are aged between 20-40.

But why is Birgunj Nepal's drug capital?

Before the arrival of Senior Superintendent of Police Ramesh Parsad Kharel in 2011, opium and cannabis were cultivated in the Parsa District right next to government offices and under the very noses of the police.

Farmers now grow alternative crops but Nepal's security strategy for the economic corridors will have to entail tight anti- drugs control measures to snuff out the possibilities of surges in drug trafficking and abuse that may result from better connectivity across South Asia.

With a rising number of addicts and traffickers, the drug game poses a threat to Birgunj's security and sustainability. The high incidence can destroy family units and reduce the workforce available in the district as well as turning Nepal into an international drug hub.