Amritsar: BSF Shoots Down Drone Carrying 12-Kg Consignment Along India-Pak Border, Second Incident In Three Days

The drone weighing 12 kg had four propellers. It was intercepted and shot down around 9.15 pm near the Rania border post in the Amritsar sector by the troops of the 22nd Battalion of the BSF.

New Delhi: The Border Security Force on Sunday, shot down a quad-copter drone suspected to be carrying narcotics during the night along the India-Pakistan international border in the Amritsar region, officials said, as reported by the news agency PTI. This is the second such incident in the past three days at this frontier.

The drone weighing 12 kg had four propellers. It was intercepted and shot down around 9.15 pm near the Rania border post in the Amritsar sector by the troops of the 22nd Battalion of the BSF, they said. A green-coloured packet was recovered from under the drone and it had two kg of material, which is suspected to be narcotics, a BSF spokesperson said, PTI reported.

Two propellors sustained damage due to firing by troops. The consignment was also recovered. "Search operation is underway. It is the second drone that BSF troops have shot down in the last two days," news agency ANI quoted a senior BSF officer as saying.

In a similar incident that took place on the intervening night of October 13-14, the BSF shot down a large (quadcopter) Pakistani drone in the Gurdaspur sector of Punjab.

In the past nine months, security forces have observed the illegal entry of 191 drones into Indian territory from Pakistan, raising major concerns in terms of internal security in the country. The Centre recently shared the input from the security forces deployed at the India-Pakistan border to maintain such illegal attempts from the Pakistan side.

Out of the 191 drones observed by the security forces, 171 entered into Indian territory through the India-Pakistan border along the Punjab sector while 20 were seen in the Jammu sector, a document accessed by the ANI mentions.

According to the document, 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".

The documents further reveal that most of these drones or UAVs managed to flee while a total of seven have been shot down by the Border Security Force (BSF) personnel, who are deployed along the India-Pakistan border to keep a tab on such illegal activities being orchestrated by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence.

Among seven drones shot down this year between January 1 to September 15 were observed in Punjab's Amritsar, Ferozpur and Abohar regions. Officials in the BSF told ANI 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 security forces have seized various AK series assault rifles, pistols, MP4 carbines, carbine magazines, high explosive grenades as well as narcotics which were transported into Indian territory from Pakistan from the drones shot down so far.

According to the security agencies, BSF intelligence inputs and Jammu and Kashmir Police officials, the drones are also used to drop packets of Afghan heroin for financing terror operations in the Valley and Punjab.

(With Inputs from agencies)