Inside India's War On Drugs: 3.9 Lakh Pending Cases, Laboratory Delays, Compounding Backlogs

On May 8, 2026, news reports from Punjab's Kapurthala district described a family in which a mother had watched all five of her sons die from drug addiction — one after another, across years. The report did not describe an unusual household.

It described the concentrated version of a crisis that is distributed across hundreds of thousands of Indian families, particularly in the Punjab-Haryana-Himachal belt, in Rajasthan's border districts, and in the urban pockets of every major Indian city where synthetic drugs have displaced traditional narcotics.

On July 29, 2026, advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay filed a PIL in the Supreme Court citing that family and dozens of similar cases, and asked the court to address what he described as the systemic failure at the prosecution end of India's drug war: approximately 3.9 lakh NDPS cases pending in trial courts.

Keeping this in mind, the union government pushed upon the states to set up additional special courts to better handle the astronomically high backlog of cases

Why Are 3.9 Lakh NDPS Cases Pending?

The answer is three compounding failures. The first is court capacity. In Pune, 1425 NDPS cases were pending at the time the Maharashtra Cabinet approved a new special court on July 28, 2026. Taking cognisance of the problem, the central government also pushed state governments to set up additional special courts.

The second failure is forensic science laboratory delays. Every NDPS case requires a chemical analysis report from an FSL certifying that the seized substance is indeed a narcotic drug or psychotropic substance as alleged. Earlier this year, Kerala's High Court had noted that FSL vacancies were contributing to serious delays in investigations and trials, and directed the state to fill sanctioned posts and create new ones.

The third failure is the registration-to-disposal ratio. India's NDPS enforcement has intensified dramatically: the NCB and state police forces are seizing more narcotics, registering more FIRs, and making more arrests than at any previous point. But the court system's absorption capacity has not scaled commensurately. Every year, new filings exceed disposals by a significant margin, and the backlog compounds.

According to a report by the Indian Express, around 10,000 monthly NDPS cases are registered in India while conviction rates remain alarmingly low, at just around 15 per month.

Why Does India Need Special Drug Courts?

The NDPS Act creates a separate criminal offence regime with specific procedural requirements: mandatory minimum sentences (10 years' rigorous imprisonment for commercial quantity trafficking), special evidentiary rules, reverse burden of proof in certain cases, and provisions for bail that are far more stringent than for ordinary criminal offences. Regular sessions courts handling mixed dockets cannot give NDPS cases the focused attention their complexity demands.

Special NDPS courts, staffed with dedicated judges familiar with the Act's evidentiary standards and sentencing architecture, can in principle process drug cases faster and more accurately. The Narcotics Control Bureau's own data supports this: in 2025, NCB secured convictions of 219 drug traffickers in 103 NDPS cases.

Which States Have The Biggest Backlog?

The backlog is most severe in states with the highest drug seizure and enforcement activity, which are, not coincidentally, also the states most affected by drug abuse.

An Indian Express report stated that Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have about 15,000 pending cases Karnataka while Madhya Pradesh has about 14,000 pending cases. In West Bengal and Himachal Pradesh there are about 11,000 pending cases.

In J&K, the NCORD review found that conviction figures stood at 135 in 2024 and 140 in 2025, from a pending caseload of nearly 11,000.

How Does Delayed Justice Affect The Fight Against Narcotics?

The connection between trial delay and the drug trade is direct and documented. When drug traffickers know that an NDPS case will take seven to ten years to reach conviction the deterrent effect of the mandatory minimum sentence evaporates.

A trafficker arrested with commercial quantities of narcotics knows they face years of bail hearings, adjournments, and procedural delays before any consequence arrives. The drug trade's business model incorporates the slow justice system as a cost of operations.

Bail provisions under the NDPS Act are strict — courts are required to refuse bail for commercial quantity offences unless certain conditions are met. But accused persons who are denied bail languish in overcrowded prisons for years awaiting trial, creating a humanitarian problem even for those who may ultimately be acquitted.

What Has The Centre Asked States To Do?

The Ministry of Home Affairs has in 2026 renewed its advisory to states to establish dedicated NDPS courts in districts with high drug caseloads, to fill FSL vacancies as a priority, and to adopt the Narco Coordination Centre (NCORD) framework for inter-agency coordination.

All states and UTs were also asked to submit a status report to the Home Ministry on setting up exclusive NDPS courts in compliance with Supreme Court directions. Officials of MHA and NCB were asked to organise a meeting with registrars of high courts of states where large numbers of NDPS cases are pending, the Indian Express Report stated.

Earlier, Union Home Minister Amit Shah underscored the drug challenges India faces due to the country being situated between the Death Triangle and Death Crescent, referring to the drug producing states of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.

“We are geographically situated between the Death Triangle and the Death Crescent. Drug-traffickers have made our fight even more challenging by adopting advanced methods. Along with drug-trafficking, organised crime, narco-terror financing and the funding of cross-border terrorist networks, this problem has also evolved into an evolving narco-terrorism ecosystem. For the internal security of our country, the protection of our economy, and the future of our youth generation, we must achieve complete victory over this menace.”