New Delhi: A mini unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) being used by the Indian army for surveillance inadvertently drifted into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district, PTI reported officials saying.
The drone, which was on a test training sortie in the hinterland of the Bhimber Gali area, lost control with the operator due to a technical issue it developed and drifted into the other side of LoC, officials added.
According to The Hindu, the incident took place around 9:25 am on Friday, August 23, when the mini-UAV was on a training mission “well within the Indian territory”. “It lost control due to a technical malfunction and drifted into the Nikial Sector of PoK opposite our Bhimber Gali Sector,” an Army official told the newspaper.
The army said, according to the media inputs, Pakistan troops had recovered it. A hotline message had already been sent from the Indian army to the Pakistani army to return the UAV.
Similarly, in March 2022, an accident firing of a missile into Pakistan from the Indian side attracted strong protest from Islamabad, raising concerns about safety mechanisms in place for military operations across the LoC between two nuclear-armed nations. India had said, at that time, that it was due to a technical failure during routine maintenance.
Meanwhile, security has been at an all-time high on the Indian side of the LoC to keep a strict vigil along the border to prevent infiltration into the country, in the wake of the rising number of terror incidents in the Jammu region. On August 14, defence minister Rajnath Singh had held a high-level review of the security situation along LoC.
