Original subtitles

Hello, and welcome to Global Eye from the BBC World Service.

I'm Divya Arya reporting for the BBC from India,

joining you from Indian-administered Kashmir,

a region known for its outstanding natural beauty,

but where dozens were killed on both sides

when the country came to the brink of a full-blown war

with its neighbour Pakistan a few months ago.

A truce was eventually brokered, but the hostilities stayed,

seeping now onto the cricket pitch.

I'll explain how.

BBC Eye investigates the Indian pharma firm

that has been fuelling West Africa's opioid crisis.

And we'll hear from Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai

about her fight for girls' rights around the world.

It's about advocating for a safer future for children.

It's about every girl having the right to school.

I was born in India,

and I've grown up listening to passionate accounts of love

and hate with our neighbour Pakistan.

Both countries were one to begin with,

with a shared language, food, culture, and tradition.

But in 1947, when the struggle for independence was at its peak

and Britain had to agree to end its 150-year long colonial rule,

it divided the country.

Unable to contain religious tensions,

it carved out Muslim-majority areas out of India

into a new country called Pakistan,

leaving Hindu-majority areas in India.

It was a bloody partition.

Polarised by religion, neighbour turned on neighbour,

and brutal atrocities were committed.

An estimated 1 million died.

In one of the largest mass migrations in the world's history,

15 million were displaced, as many Muslims fled to Pakistan

and Hindus and Sikhs headed in the opposite direction.

But it didn't end there.

This is the Hazratbal Shrine,

a sacred Muslim landmark and mosque,

and a revered pilgrimage site for thousands of people each year.

Kashmir is the only Muslim-majority region

that lies within India, and remains contested between the two countries.

Both sides administer it in part, but claim it in full.

Though pilgrims and tourists both flock to Kashmir,

it remains one of the most militarised zones in the world.

It's hard to miss the presence of security forces here

that India says are necessary,

as it accuses Pakistan of backing militants

in Indian-administered Kashmir, a charge its neighbour denies.

Over almost eight decades,

there have been numerous bursts of fighting,

tens of thousands of deaths.

But there has never been an agreed border in Kashmir.

India and Pakistan have fought two wars

over this Himalayan region, and after years of relative calm

came to the brink of another just a few months ago.

In April 2025, militants killed 26 people

in an attack on tourists in the resort town of Pahalgam,

50 miles east of here.

The area where the attack happened remains closed off

by security forces.

It was the deadliest attack on civilians in two decades.

Filmed by unsuspecting tourists taking selfies and videos,

it enraged people,

and tensions flared amongst the nuclear-armed neighbours.

India blamed the attack on Pakistan

and responded with air strikes two weeks later in what it said

was a bid to dismantle insurgent strongholds

in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Pakistan itself.

Pakistan denied any role,

and retaliated with missiles, drones, and fighter jets.

Airports and train stations were shut,

and journalists like me had to make our way from Delhi

over 18-hour-long road journeys

to get to Srinagar here and to border areas.

We were carrying our flak jackets and helmets with us,

but this clash was different.

This was the first time high-tech jets,

missiles, and drones were being used.

The administration would impose blackouts at night,

and we would spend hours hiding,

listening to the sound of shelling

and mortar bursts around and above us.

I met many who have been repeatedly caught up

in the deadly attacks between India and Pakistan

in this region over the decades,

losing family, friends, and homes in the flare-ups.

And one story that really broke my heart was of 12-year-old twins,

whose family had recently moved to live closer

to their school in a border town.

But that area was targeted by shelling,

and as they tried to flee, the children were killed.

A truce was reached between the two countries.

Life has limped back to normal here,

a region which has seen many flare-ups over the years.

But tourism, the mainstay of Kashmir's economy,

has been badly hit.

The confrontation between the two countries was even felt

on the cricket pitch when India and Pakistan

faced each other at the Asia Cup in September.

India's cricketers refused to shake hands with Pakistan

in that first tournament since the conflict.

No handshake at the time of toss between the captains either.

The strained politics between the countries has meant

that matches between the cricket-crazy countries

are organised in neutral locations and are highly charged spectacles.

So this was not unexpected, but it marked a new low.

There were gestures made on the field...

THEY SPEAK OVER EACH OTHER

..words spoken at post-match press conferences.

And after India defeated Pakistan in a cliff-hanger final match,

it refused to accept the winner's trophy from Asian Cricket Council

president who is also the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board.

Opinions on cricket, though, remain divided.

While some feel a symbolic point needed to be scored,

others feel that politics should not negate sporting spirit.

For those living here in Kashmir,

it was an unsettling reminder of the volatile relationship

between two nuclear-armed neighbours,

and the cost any flare-up could have on their lives.

Now, a few months ago, the BBC Eye team went undercover

to expose a Mumbai-based pharmaceutical company

manufacturing unlicensed addictive opioids

and exporting them illegally to West Africa,

where they have been driving a major public health crisis.

Here's more from Surabhi Tandon.

Illegal, addictive opioids are flooding the streets of West Africa,

destroying thousands of lives and fuelling a public health crisis.

It's happening in Cote d'Ivoire,

in Ghana, in Nigeria.

But where are these pills coming from?

How are they getting into West Africa?

I think this is wickedness.

And who are the people making a killing from them?

I'm on my way to the Nigerian Drugs Enforcement Agency, the NDLEA.

Their checkpoints have become a common sight

on the streets of Lagos.

in 2023, they seized opioids

worth more than US$100 million.

This here, all this is 225 tramadol. Which is illegal?

Which is illegal.

Tramadol is a catch-all name

to describe the range of opioids used as street drugs.

It's estimated more than 4 million people

in Nigeria are misusing some form of opioid.

We're having a problem coming in from another country.

It has become a big menace in Nigeria.

And which country is that? India.

In 2018, the government banned the sale

of tramadol without prescription and cracked down on

the import of illegal opioids.

Since then, more and more are being smuggled across the borders.

This shipment came in through Ghana, through the borders.

They had been tracking him for five months.

Would you say that the route between Ghana and Nigeria

is becoming more popular in the last year or so?

Definitely, it is.

Tamale in northern Ghana has been hit hard

by a recent rise in opioid use.

Journalist Yahaya Masahudu grew up here.

These drugs are destroying families,

destroying young men and women with potential

who otherwise would have been able to help in developing this country.

It's got so bad, locals have set up their own task force

to track down the opioid dealers.

A tip-off has led them to one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Tamale.

They'll be raiding the place to see if they can get some of the drugs.

What is happening right now is

the task force is here to arrest the drug dealers.

RAISED VOICES

This is what they found here with just one raid.

Yeah. This is what happens almost on a daily basis.

These opioids are highly addictive.

Some take them as painkillers

or to help them get through hard physical work.

But many use them simply to get high.

They can cause breathing problems and seizures.

Overdosing can kill.

The man in yellow is just a small-time dealer.

But who is at the top of this chain?

These packets are all we have to go on.

But they do offer some clues.

Hi, Surabhi. Hi, Yahaya. Good to see you.

Did you get the photos I sent to you from the raid

the task force did the other day?

Yeah, I have them pulled up on my computer now.

The product is called Tafrodol.

The Ghanaian FDA have confirmed to me

the product is illegal in Ghana.

Then I can also see that it says "made in India".

And if I zoom into the corner,

there's a logo with an A and a leaf.

It's important to look into that and to find out

who is responsible for bringing the product into West Africa.

The task force is trying to catch the traders and smugglers,

but it's the source that needs to be stopped.

So let me start there,

and I'll get back to you when I have more information.

We know the drugs are made in India.

Now we need to find out who is making them.

When I put Tafrodol into a search engine,

the top result shows that the brand name Tafrodol

is registered to a company called Aveo Pharmaceuticals.

When I look for Aveo Pharmaceuticals...

..their official website shows up,

which actually details their products and manufacturing practices.

It looks like a legitimate company,

but it's the logo that really catches my attention.

I found teenagers in Cote d'Ivoire

are mixing Tafrodol with an alcoholic drink called Vody.

And there it is, the same logo.

Aveo Pharmaceuticals.

It's not just Cote d'Ivoire.

Even in Ghana, I found reports of Tafrodol being seized by the police.

When I zoom in, there is an A which looks like the A from Aveo.

In the same seizure is another product, Tima King.

In the corner of that box, the same logo, Aveo Pharmaceuticals.

We also sent out researchers in Nigeria

to see if they could find products with the Aveo logo on them.

And sure enough, they came back to us with Tafrodol-XX.

We know the name of the company.

Now we need to find the people at the top.

An undercover operative agreed to go to Aveo's factory

posing as a businessman looking to supply opioids to Nigeria.

This is one of the directors of Aveo

and the boss of this factory, Vinod Sharma.

He takes them on a tour of the factory.

Back at Sharma's office, it's time to talk business.

The packet of Tafrodol is instantly recognisable.

It's the same brand found on the streets in Ghana

and Cote d'Ivoire.

This is Super Royal.

It looks just like the drugs found in Lagos.

This is TimaKing -

the same product seized by the Ghanaian police in 2024.

Vinod Sharma displays many more products

that look remarkably similar to those found

by authorities across West Africa.

Sharma doesn't flinch when the team tells him

who they're planning to sell the opioids to.

Catching market. Slowly, slowly.

In India, any drug made only for export must comply with

the requirements of the importing country.

Ghana's drug authorities told us this product doesn't meet

the import requirements.

By shipping Tafrodol to Ghana, Aveo is breaking Indian law.

Now we know who's making the drug, but how is it getting into Ghana?

Oh, this is it.

You can see Samospharma waiting.

We found evidence that a company in the capital,

Accra, has handled millions of the pills.

I'm not very sure that these guys are going to be friendly

and whether they will allow us to film.

This is the evidence that led us to Samospharma -

export data showing that Samos has imported millions of opioid pills

from India through Ghanaian ports by a company called

Westfin International.

Looking into Westfin, we found the board of directors,

among them a familiar name...

..Vinod Sharma.

In Tamale, it's left for groups like the Citizens Task Force

to tackle the opioid crisis.

More of Vinod Sharma's Tafrodol.

That evening, they gather in a local park to burn the drugs.

This task force, in one small corner of West Africa,

is doing all they can.

But as these drugs burn,

production lines in India are churning out millions more.

And the people who make them are getting rich

on the profits of other people's misery.

Since we first broadcast that report,

the Indian government has banned the sale and production

of those two opioids in combination,

and the government of Ghana has launched an investigation

into the opioid crisis in the country.

Now, a few hundred miles from here is the city of Kabul,

in Afghanistan, where in recent days,

the BBC's Afghan Service has been trying

to find ways to continue to reach its audiences in the country

after a 48-hour internet blackout by the Taliban government

cut the country off from the rest of the world.

The United Nations Mission in Afghanistan said

it was particularly worried about the effect of the outage

on women and girls, who are already very isolated in the country.

Here's Sadaf Ghayasi from the BBC's Afghan Service

to explain how their teams continue to reach their audiences

in desperate need.

BBC Radio is the only radio for now in Afghanistan

because the other radio stations are banned by the Taliban.

So no back anno? No goodbye.

I'm doing bulletins and also phone-in programmes.

The situation was quite tense,

not only for those living inside Afghanistan,

even for us, as the team working on that day.

We were all affected.

We were all emotionally attached.

That was the moment that we got the idea that after this,

that we are running our phone-in programme,

so let's just be the bridge as they are calling on us.

I just had a look around.

Everybody was crying around me.

The way they were trying to deliver their messages, it was...

They were reminding me of my parents living inside the country.

I was not able to deliver my message either.

So I was seeing myself, I was feeling them.

But as BBC says, audiences first.

So for me, it was really important to be the bridge

and convey their messages.

So, yeah, I would describe it tough and emotional.

She's now one of the most famous human rights campaigners

in the world, a woman who experienced the brutality

of the Taliban first-hand when she was shot

in the head in Pakistan as an 11-year-old schoolgirl.

Almost a decade on,

and Malala Yousafzai's Foundation now is

a global force for the rights of girls -

most recently working in Nigeria, where, in some states,

more than half of the girls are not in school.

Madina Maishanu sat down with Malala in the capital, Abuja.

You've recently written a new book which is yet to be released.

It's called Finding My Way,

and that title just seems very personal.

What does it mean to you?

Yes, this is the most personal reflections

I have ever shared before.

And I was still in an induced coma

in a hospital when the world was defining me as this brave,

courageous young activist.

But I was still 15 years old and I did not know who I was.

So I have openly shared about my life since then.

I talk about my school years, which were lonely.

I talk about my college life,

where I decided to become more of a reckless student.

I talk about friendships and love life, and at the same time,

mental health, because that is something that affected me

many, many years later after the attack.

Would you say that subsequently fame also impacted your childhood?

I think it was a bit of everything.

At 15, when I was recovered from the attack,

I started school in the UK, in a completely new country.

I actually really struggled to make friends.

By the end of my school time, I just had made one friend.

So when I was about to join university,

I had one mission,

and that was to make as many friends as I could,

because friends also help you grow as a person.

It is part of the emotional growth, from handling essay crisis

to just have moments of laughter, to also being there with each other

when we have gone through tough moments.

Why did you struggle to make friends?

Was it the fame?

I think it's because people think that they know you.

They have heard about you on TV,

so they have this fixed image of you,

and it was this gap of having a normal conversation

that I couldn't get, because, like in Pakistan, of course,

I was, you know, a normal girl.

I was mischievous sometimes. I had a lot of friends.

I loved to talk about anything.

And what I wanted was that you can be an activist,

but you could also be yourself.

So would you personally consider yourself

as an activist or a politician?

MALALA CHUCKLES

I think for me, like, it's about advocating

for a safer future for children.

It's about every girl having the right to school,

and that is the mission of my life.

But if you look at the world, and if there's, like, a war going on,

if there is conflict, if there's a genocide going on,

like, millions of children lose their future,

and we cannot look away from that.

The change that we want to bring will not become a reality

if we look away from the catastrophe,

from the disasters that are happening right now.

Everything you've been through, your journey,

when you were shot, and the Malala of today,

do you think it's all worth it?

This is a, you know, like, a tough question to address because...

I usually would say that, you know, I wish I was in the old life.

I wish, you know, I could have continued my life in Pakistan.

But when I think about how things took a turn,

and now that I'm able to lead a movement for girls' education,

and we are able to work together with incredible partners,

like here in Nigeria, you know, whatever the circumstances,

this pathway is rewarding, and I do not want to look back.

I do not want to change it for a second,

because of the change that today we can make for girls.

Thank you so much, Malala. Thank you.

Thanks for joining me in Kashmir.

We want to hear your feedback about Global Eye,

so let us know on social media.

Next week, we'll be reporting from Lebanon.

Goodbye.