Chandigarh: In the first case of use of drones for smuggling drugs in Punjab, the state police Friday seized two highly sophisticated Chinese-made drones and arrested an Army Naik and two others involved in smuggling narcotics across the border.
Punjab Police has been on high alert since August last year when two drones were found airdropping weapons from across the border.
Again, in September, drones and weapons were recovered and intelligence agencies found Pakistani involvement in the incident.
The seizure of two more drones within just four months points towards increased use of drones for narco-terror crimes, said Punjab DGP Dinkar Gupta, adding that use of drones is becoming a cause of grave concern for security agencies
Gupta said the two drones recovered Friday were bigger in size — a hexacopter and a quadcopter — and are capable of travelling 2-3 km on either side of the border.
The drones were being launched from the Indian side to fly into Pakistan to pick up payloads of narcotics, police said. They had apparently already conducted 4-5 sorties. No drugs have yet been recovered from the arrested persons, said Gupta.
The accused have been identified as Dharminder Singh of Amritsar, Army Naik Rahul Chauhan, posted at Ambala Cantt, and Balkar Singh of Amritsar (rural).
Dharminder Singh and Balkar Singh have been facing several cases under Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substance Act in Punjab, said police.
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‘Army Naik involved in operating drone sorties across border’
Giving details of Friday’s operation at a press conference in Chandigarh, Gupta said this was the first instance of drones being used to smuggle narcotics.
He said the accused admitted to having been involved in cross-border smuggling of drugs and weapons using drones for the past few months. Certain Pakistan-based drug smugglers were sending the drugs and weapons from across the border, he added.
Two members of the narco-terror module are still absconding and efforts are on to nab them, said the DGP.
Preliminary investigations have confirmed that Chauhan was directly involved in operating drone sorties across the border for picking up heroin as well as weapons from Pakistan, along with his associates in India and Pakistan.
He and his accomplices were in direct contact with Pakistani smugglers on encrypted OTT platforms, said the DGP, adding that the plan was to send one of the Walkie Talkie sets to Pakistan to facilitate two-way communication, said Gupta.
The first drone, a Chinese made DJI INSPIRE 2 drone (Quadcopter), was recovered from an abandoned government dispensary building in Amritsar where it had been hidden by Dharminder Singh and his aides.
The 2nd drone, a Chinese made DJI MATRICE 600 PRO (Hexacopter), was recovered from a house in Karnal, Haryana.
In response to a question at the press conference, the DGP said technologies to immobilise drones are available and efforts are on to develop them indigenously.
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