Officers of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), in a joint intelligence-led operation with personnel of the 38 Battalion of Assam Rifles, seized 20 kg of methamphetamine tablets — commonly known as yaba — from a tipper truck in Assam's Cachar district on November 12, 2026, the Ministry of Finance said in a release issued on November 14.

Source: ANI (Ministry of Finance release)

Acting on an intelligence input, the officers intercepted a Tata tipper truck near Borkhola in Cachar district. During a detailed inspection, carried out with the assistance of a mechanic, they detected a specially fabricated cavity in the upper inner portion of the truck's right-side panel; the panel bore signs of cutting and welding that had been camouflaged with cement and paint.

Source: Indian Economic Observer (ANI)

32 packets, field test positive for amphetamine

Inside the cavity, officers recovered 32 packets containing pinkish-orange tablets suspected to be methamphetamine: 17 brick-shaped packets of 1 kg each and 15 rectangular packets of 200 grams each, totalling 20 kg. Preliminary field tests on representative samples, using an NDPS field detection kit, indicated the presence of amphetamine, according to the release.

The recovered tablets and the truck were seized under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, and the occupant of the truck was arrested under the Act. The DRI said the operation exposed an innovative concealment method — a fabricated cavity inside the side panel of a tipper truck, its opening camouflaged with cement and paint to evade routine checks — and that it would continue intelligence-led operations and inter-agency cooperation against drug trafficking networks in the North-Eastern region.

This seizure is distinct from the DRI-Assam Rifles operations of October 29-30, in which 30 kg of yaba tablets were recovered near Aizawl and 20 kg of crystal meth at Dholai near Silchar, with four arrests.