Drone sorties: Police register FIRs to nail drug smugglers

PK Jaiswar

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Amritsar, August 28

To nail smugglers in border areas involved in peddling of drugs, arms and ammunition from across the barbed wire fencing with the help of drones, the Punjab police have started filing FIRs in all drone-related cases whether there was any recovery or not.

Earlier, the police used to register FIRs only in cases where there was some recovery of contraband, arms or drones.

In a recent case, the police booked unknown persons after a drone sortie was noticed by alert Border Security Force jawans in the Ajnala area. The incident occurred on the intervening night of August 26-27. After observing a buzzing sound, apparently of drone, the BSF personnel fired at a suspicious flying object coming from the Pakistan side into the Indian territory. BSF officials, while lodging a complaint with the police, said that the suspected flying object may have been carrying contraband or arms and ammunition near Khanwal and Balarwal border villages and there was an apparent movement of smugglers in the area.

The Ajnala police have registered a case under Sections 10, 11 and 12 of the Aircraft Act in this connection. Two similar cases were registered by the Ajnala police on August 20. In both the cases, the BSF jawans had fired after hearing a buzzing sound in the air.

A senior official from the Amritsar rural police district said that the police were already running a Drone Emergency Response system with the help of border villagers. The village defence committees formed under the system would try to cordon off the area where drones are suspected of having dropped the consignments so that smugglers could not recover the same. He said senior police officials were keeping a tab on all such incidents being reported in the border villages in order to nail the drug traffickers.