Army’s unmanned aerial vehicle develops snag, drifts into PoK

The army sent a message over the hotline to the Pakistani Army to return the UAV, said one of the officials. It was on a training mission

New Delhi: A mini unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) of the Indian Army, being operated in the Rajouri sector, developed a technical snag on Friday and strayed across the Line of Control (LoC) into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, officials aware of the matter said.

(Representative Photo)

The army sent a message over the hotline to the Pakistani Army to return the UAV, said one of the officials. It was on a training mission.

“At 9.25am, a mini UAV on a training mission well within the Indian territory lost control due to a technical malfunction and drifted into the Nikial sector of Pakistan, opposite our Bhimber Gali sector,” said another official. Pakistani troops are believed to have recovered the UAV.

The army is keeping strict vigil along the LoC to prevent terrorist infiltrators from entering the country.

On August 14, defence minister Rajnath Singh chaired a top security meeting to review the security situation in Jammu and Kashmir following a spike in terror attacks and hammer out a strategy to crush the menace, on a day a 25-year-old army officer was killed fighting terrorists in the mountain forests of Doda district.

The Doda encounter came days after chief of defence staff General Anil Chauhan said that the proxy war waged by Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir, whose sudden escalation is being witnessed in areas to the south of the Pir Panjal range, was one of the main security challenges confronting India.