The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday conducted searches at multiple locations, including Poonch district in Jammu and Kashmir in a drone delivery case. The searches come after Border Security Forces (BSF) personnel gunned down a drone that sneaked into Indian territory in Punjab's Gurdaspur sector from the Pakistan side on the International Border in the early hours of Friday.
A senior BSF officer said that the drone was spotted at 4.35 am by BSF troops on patrolling duty. The personnel immediately opened fire and it was shot down. As per the BSF official, a massive search operation has been launched in the area to determine whethere the drone has dropped any consignment in the area.
"Brave jawans of BSF spotted a drone coming from Pakistan side. As soon as it entered India, jawans fired 17 rounds of bullets at it. One of the blades of the drone was damaged. The entire area is being searched. The drone will be analysed," said BSF DIG, Gurdaspur, Prabhakar Joshi.
The Central government recently revealed that the input from the security forces deployed at the India-Pakistan border to maintain such illegal attempts from the neighbouring country.
Out of 191 drones observed, 171 entered India through the India-Pakistan border along the Punjab sector. 20 drones were seen in the Jammu sector, a document accessed by the ANI mentioned.
The document says, the "UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) observation in Indo-Pak border was seen in Punjab and Jammu frontier with effect from January 1, 2022, to September 30, 2022".
BSF official said that drones are being used by Pakistan's side to transport weapons, explosives and narcotics across the international border in Jammu and Punjab from Pakistan.
The increased drone activity across the India-Pakistan border was brought to the notice of Home Minister Amit Shah in the security review meeting recently held in Srinagar with top security and intelligence chiefs in attendance.
So far, the security forces have seized various AK series assault rifles, pistols, MP4 carbines, carbine magazines, high explosive grenades as well as narcotics that were transported into the Indian territory from neighbouring Pakistan through the drones shot down so far.
The Home Ministry, thus, has directed the concerned agencies to find out a solution to stop drone activities.
