Another Pakistani drone shot down on Punjab border

Border Security Force personnel shot down a drone that entered Indian territory from the Pakistani side of the border in Punjab’s Gurdaspur district on at 4:35 am on Friday.

Alert BSF troops spotted the drone and opened fire immediately. A  massive search operation has been launched in the entire area.

There has been a sharp increase in the number of drones that Pakistan has been sending across the border this year carrying arms, ammunition and drugs for terrorist outfits that are being backed by Islamabad to foment trouble in India.

Recently China-made grenades, which had come through the Punjab border from Pakistan were seized in Hyderabad from a terrorist group affiliated with the banned PFI. This indicates how Pakistan’s notorious ISI is spreading its tentacles.

In the past nine months, security forces have observed the illegal entry of 191 drones into Indian territory from neighbouring Pakistan, raising major concerns in terms of internal security of  the country as Islamabad continues to step up its support to cross-border terrorism.

Of the 191 drones observed, 171 entered 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.

The documents further reveal that most of these drones or UAVs managed to escape 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 track of such illegal activities being orchestrated by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence.

Seven drones were shot down this year between January 1 and September 15 in Punjab’s Amritsar, Ferozepur and Abohar districts.

The increased drone activity across the border was brought to the notice of Home Minister Amit Shah in the security review meeting in Srinagar recently which was attended by the country’s top security and intelligence chiefs. While the BSF claims that it has been able to repel drones carrying arms, ammunition and explosives from Pakistan, the state police and the intelligence agencies do not agree with this assessment.