NEW DELHI: Seizure of narcotic drugs like opium, heroin and cannabis in the country has increased by more than 300 per cent in the last five years with 2017 witnessing an all-time high recovery of over 3.6 lakh kg of narcotics, according to the latest NCB report.

NCB officials attributed the highest seizure of these drugs in the last year to an increased amount of awareness and enhanced capabilities of drug law enforcement agencies to interdict illegal cache.

« Not only in the last five years, the seizures in the years prior to that were no match to what has been recovered and seized in 2017, » a senior official said.

Among the states last year, the maximum opium seizure was made from Punjab at 505.86 kgs followed by Rajasthan at 426.95 kgs, the maximum amount of heroin was seized in Gujarat at 1,017 kgs followed by Punjab at 406 kgs.

Cannabis seizure was the highest in Andhra Pradesh at 78,767 kgs followed by Odisha at 55,875 kgs during 2017.

While Uttar Pradesh accounted for the maximum hashish (also known as charas) seizure at 702 kgs followed by Madhya Pradesh at 625 kgs, the national capital of Delhi had the highest seizure of cocaine at 30 kgs followed by Maharashtra at 21.83 kgs.

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