For ten years, Bihar’s war on illicit liquor has been loud and visible, with raids, seizures and arrests. A new investigation suggests that a quieter market has been growing beside it, one that is harder to see and, police say, harder to stop.

Bihar Police say they have seized about 3.16 crore litres of liquor since prohibition began in 2016. What officers now describe is a second trade, in heroin, tablets and a recently arrived substance known as “kota”, which has been spreading into the state’s villages.

The numbers

The figures cited in the investigation are striking.

• Cases registered under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act rose from 697 in 2019 to 1,905 in just the first five months of 2026.
• Tablet seizures climbed from 29,762 in 2022 to 9.29 lakh in the first five months of 2026, roughly a 30-fold increase.

The report says heroin use is also rising. Cases and seizures are not the same as consumption, and higher numbers can partly reflect more policing. But the scale of the change has made officers, doctors and social workers sit up.

What is “kota”?

Officers describe kota as a form of raw heroin, mainly inhaled with cigarettes. A narcotics officer quoted in the report said the name appears to come from the word “dose”, which addicts and peddlers pronounce as “quota”. Over time, the name stuck to the substance itself.

Reports say kota arrives in ready-made boxes from Myanmar, where clandestine laboratories in the Golden Triangle region, which spans Myanmar, Laos and Thailand, have increasingly shifted from opium and heroin to synthetic drugs and raw heroin variants. From Myanmar, high-grade heroin, methamphetamine and kota are said to enter India through porous stretches of the border adjoining Mizoram and Manipur, and travel onward along road and rail links to Bihar. Bihar also shares a long border with Nepal, which the report identifies as another route.

A market built to avoid notice.

A bottle of liquor is bulky and easy to spot. Narcotics are not. Police say they are now finding pocket-sized packets, strips of tablets, small vials, and drugs hidden in soap boxes or in folds of clothing. The change in format makes searches harder and detection slower.

A strain on policing and health

The rise has stretched Bihar’s enforcement and health systems, which were built around a very different problem. Police forces trained to hunt for liquor now have to deal with chemical drugs and new routes. Doctors and social workers say rural families are increasingly seeing addiction in a way they did not before, and the state’s capacity to offer treatment and rehabilitation is under pressure.

The prohibition debate

The findings are likely to feed a long-running argument over whether prohibition works. Supporters say it has reduced alcohol consumption and domestic violence, and point to the scale of liquor seizures. Critics say it has driven demand underground and opened the door to other substances and to illicit trade. The data above does not prove that prohibition caused the rise in narcotics. It coincides with it, and many factors, including supply routes from the Northeast and better enforcement, may be involved.

If you or someone you know needs help

Addiction is a health condition, and treatment works. Families can approach a local government hospital, a de-addiction centre or a trained counsellor, and should not wait for a crisis.

What to watch

How the state government responds, whether enforcement and treatment capacity are expanded, and whether the new border routes can be disrupted. The first five months of 2026 already exceed any full year in the reported figures, so the year’s final tally will show how fast the problem is growing.

 

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