Officials of the Border Security Force (BSF) held a meeting with Pakistan Rangers at the Kartarpur corridor to curb the menace of smuggling of drugs, arms and ammunition with the use of drones, on Thursday.
BSF’s deputy inspector general (DIG), Gurdaspur, Prabhakar Joshi headed the Indian team while Pakistan’s sector commander brigadier Fahd Ayub had led the team of rangers. Two wing commanders of Pakistan were also present in the meeting.
“The main agenda of the meeting was to curb the threat of drone. We have conveyed our grievance to the Pakistani Rangers. They have assured us of the best possible solution,” said a senior BSF official, who was part of the meeting.
He further said, “The meeting was conducted after a period of three years. Earlier, such meeting to lodge our protest regarding the smuggling of contraband was conducted at the Attari border in 2019. Due to the pandemic such meetings could not be conducted in the past three years.”
The meeting comes amid the increasing attempts to push in drugs, arms, ammunition and explosives into the Indian territory through the Punjab border. Over the last five days, five drones have been spotted on the Punjab frontier. In the past few months, Punjab Police have recovered several improvised explosive devises (IEDs) reportedly flown in from Pakistan. The IED used in the Ludhiana blast incident was also said to be smuggled via drone.
{{/usCountry}}The meeting comes amid the increasing attempts to push in drugs, arms, ammunition and explosives into the Indian territory through the Punjab border. Over the last five days, five drones have been spotted on the Punjab frontier. In the past few months, Punjab Police have recovered several improvised explosive devises (IEDs) reportedly flown in from Pakistan. The IED used in the Ludhiana blast incident was also said to be smuggled via drone.
{{/usCountry}}In April, Punjab governor Banwari Lal Purohit had visited various border areas in Punjab and held a series of meetings with various security agencies of the Centre and the state government. The governor had stressed upon the need to increase coordination between the security agencies of the state and the Centre to tackle this menace. He had also held meetings with panchayats of the border villages and asked them to to support the BSF.
The BSF, in April, also announced a reward of ₹1 lakh for providing information regarding drone smuggling on the India-Pakistan border.