Bunty Mahajan
Jammu, October 2: In yet another incident of airdropping of weapons, a flying object from Pakistan side on late Saturday night airdropped a packet suspected to be containing arms and ammunition at village Alora Mandal near the international border in Jammu district.
Sources said that airdropping took around midnight. The police was informed about it by some villager to was awake and heard the sound of the flying object, suspected to be a drone.
Senior police officers including SP and SDPO (South) rushed to the spot and seized the packet contained in a yellow coloured polythene. It had a handle which was tied with a nylon thread. Further details are awaited.
Last time, it was on August 23 that a drone was spotted near the International Border (IB) in Jammu and Kashmir’s Arnia sector during wee hours, with alert BSF jawans firing at it making it to fly back towards the Pakistan side.
Drone sightings along the international border in Jammu and Kashmir have increased in the wake of the drone attack on Air Force Station Jammu in June. Two explosions had rocked the high security technical area of the station on the intervening night of June 26-27. Two Indian Air Force personnel sustained minor injuries.
In the wake of frequent UAV sightings, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has ordered stricter adherence to the Standard Operating Procedure (SoP) that was framed to handle threats from Sub-Conventional Aerial Platforms like drones, paragliders, microlight aircraft, hot-air balloons.
On July 23 this year, Jammu and Kashmir Police had shot down a Pakistani drone carrying a five kg IED in Akhnoor sector’s Gurah Pattan area. The drone, which was second one shot down by police in Jammu region since last year after Kathua’s Hiranagar, was suspected to have been sent by Jaish-e-Mohammad and it was carrying an IED in ready to use position.
It was an assembled hexa copter having parts made in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, police said, adding the drone was fitted with a flight controller and a GPS. Interestingly, there was a difference of only one digit number in the flight controller of the drone shot down today and the one last year, it said, adding that terrorist outfits across the border (in Pakistan) appear to have bought many flight controllers of one series which they have been using in different drones being sent to the Indian side.
During the last one and a half year, police have seized a large number of arms, ammunition and explosives that have been dropped through drone sorties. These include 16 AK 47 rifles, three M4 US made rifles, 34 pistols, 15 grenades and 18 IEDs including three big ones.
Even currency notes were dropped through one or two drone sorties, Singh said, adding “we have recovered Rs 4 lakh so far’’. “During the period, we have seized payload of 25-30 drone sorties and arrested many people also,’’ police said, adding that during their questioning, police have come to know that Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Toiba were dropping payloads of arms and ammunition through drones.
