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Talk:Palk Strait ganja trade

Discussion page of Palk Strait ganja trade
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Discussion for: Palk Strait ganja trade • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope
Palk Strait ganja trade treats the smuggling of ganja from India into Sri Lanka by sea, across the Palk Strait and the waters off the north and north-west of the island, from the first reports in the 1980s to the present. The inland movement of ganja from the hills of Odisha and the Andhra Pradesh agency to the Tamil Nadu coast is treated on Odisha ganja trade. The licensed export of Madras ganja to Ceylon in the 19th century, ended by Ceylon's import ban of 1897, is background only. Heroin and methamphetamine smuggled into Sri Lanka by sea are not covered except where a source compares them with the cannabis trade.
Data verification
Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Name

No source gives the trade a name of its own. Sri Lankan agencies and newspapers name the product, "Kerala ganja" or "Kerala cannabis", and Indian officials say that most of what is sold under that name is not grown in Kerala. The one place every account of the trade names is the crossing, so the title names the strait and the product. The product name is left to a separate article, Kerala Cannabis.

Sources

  • Agency reports. The United States State Department's International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (Sri Lanka chapters, 1999 to 2012); the International Narcotics Control Board's annual reports (2002, 2014, 2018); UNODC's South Asia regional profile (2005); the statistics report of Sri Lanka's National Dangerous Drugs Control Board for 2021; the Sri Lanka Navy's and the Ministry of Defence's yearly summaries of naval seizures (2019, 2022, 2024, 2026).
  • Analysis. Bibhu Prasad Routray, "Sri Lanka's Cannabis Problem: Roots in India" (Mantraya Institute for Strategic Studies, 2018), the one analysis of the trade as a whole; a retired rear admiral's article in The Morning (2024).
  • Press. The Sunday Times (Colombo, 2015 to 2023), the Daily Mirror and Daily FT (Colombo), Ceylon Wire, News 1st; the Deccan Chronicle, DT Next, The News Minute and The Times of India in India. Seizure and arrest figures are attributed to the agency the newspaper names.
  • Background. The Economic Review (People's Bank, Colombo, September 1986), quoting the National Dangerous Drugs Control Board; Down To Earth (1994); the report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894); C. G. Uragoda, "History of opium in Sri Lanka" (Medical History, 1983); the United States embassy's telegram of 18 September 1973 (Foreign Relations of the United States); Gerald H. Peiris in The Island (2015).
  • The Pathfinder Foundation's brief on drug trafficking into Sri Lanka (2025) puts most drug trafficking on the Arabian Sea route and does not discuss cannabis from India. It is not cited.

Where the sources disagree

  • Where the ganja is grown. The National Dangerous Drugs Control Board, the Sri Lanka Navy and the International Narcotics Control Board (2018) call the product Kerala cannabis or say that it comes from Kerala. Kerala's excise commissioner (2017) and the Mantraya analysis (2018) say that it is mostly grown in Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and that the name is a trade name. In 2026 a Tamil Nadu police officer called a 292 kg load sourced in Kerala the first of that size from Kerala, smugglers' ganja normally coming from Visakhapatnam and the Odisha border.
  • The 2013 seizures. The International Narcotics Control Board's report for 2014 calls almost 82 tons of cannabis seized in Sri Lanka "from India"; its report for 2018 calls the 81.9 tons seized in 2013 a record and gives no origin. The State Department's report for 2012 says that cannabis is cultivated locally in Sri Lanka, mainly in the former conflict areas of the north and east.
  • The first case from the Andhra–Odisha border. Officials quoted by News 1st in December 2025 called a case of ganja from the Andhra–Odisha border reaching Sri Lanka the first known one. Telangana police described an Andhra Pradesh to Sri Lanka group in January 2020, and a Narcotics Control Bureau official said in 2021 that ganja from the border region was smuggled to Sri Lanka.
  • Seizures in 2022. The navy's figure is 5,731 kg of Kerala cannabis. Police statistics reported by The Sunday Times in February 2023 give 12,146 kg of Kerala cannabis and 34,499 arrests; the paper's next figure, in April 2023, is 7,085 kg of cannabis seized in 2022, with no split. The National Dangerous Drugs Control Board's statistics for 2022 give 17,607 kg of cannabis in all and do not separate Kerala cannabis.
  • Prices. Telangana police (2020) gave up to 18,000 a kilogram in Sri Lanka "as per their currency value", without saying which rupee; Thanjavur police (2022) gave 50,000 Indian rupees. Only the second is in the article.
  • Early Indian seizure figures. The Mantraya analysis cites Narcotics Control Bureau figures for seizures in the "Indo-Sri Lankan sector" (38 kg in 1998, 350 kg in 2002) without naming the drug. They are not in the article.

Infobox

  • Origin is the four states the cited sources name as growing areas: Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana (Kerala's excise commissioner, the Mantraya analysis, Indian police) and Kerala (the National Dangerous Drugs Control Board, the Sri Lanka Navy, the International Narcotics Control Board). Karnataka, named by the Mantraya analysis alone, is in the text but not the infobox.
  • Via is Tamil Nadu, the Palk Strait, and the Northern or North Western Province of Sri Lanka, the coasts the navy and the press name for the landings.
  • Destination is Colombo: Colombo District had 5,386 of the 11,068 arrests for Kerala cannabis in 2021, and the Mantraya analysis gives the Colombo price.
  • Period starts in 1986, the year of the Economic Review report of Kerala ganja brought in from India by sea. The trade is still in use, so there is no end year.
  • Legal status is Illegal: ganja is prohibited in both countries throughout the period.
  • Route type is Mixed: overland in India to the coast, by sea across the strait, overland in Sri Lanka.
  • Scale is the National Dangerous Drugs Control Board's figure for 2021, the one year with a separate count across all agencies. It measures seizures, not the size of the trade.

Georeferencing

Each town on the route is given a point where two gazetteers, Wikidata and OpenStreetMap, agree to within about 2 km. Points are entered to two decimal places and mark the town.

  • Colombo: 6.94, 79.85. Wikidata 6.927, 79.861; OpenStreetMap 6.939, 79.854; 1.5 km apart.

Given without a point: Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which are states; the Palk Strait, a sea area; and the Northern and North Western provinces of Sri Lanka. None of these is drawn on the map. Éloise 07:52, 31 October 2026 (+07)

Open points

  • The National Dangerous Drugs Control Board counts Kerala cannabis separately in its statistics for 2021 only. Its statistics for 2022, its handbooks for 2022 and 2025 and its trend report for 2024 give cannabis as one figure.
  • The navy's yearly totals of Kerala cannabis for 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2025 are not in the article.
  • None of the cited sources dates the start of the sea trade in Indian ganja more closely than the 1986 report.
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