E-Paper
Drone recovered from farmland within 300 metres of Indo-Bangla border in West Bengal
The drone was first spotted by a farmer Pankaj Sarkar around 6:00 am when he went to his farmland. The drone was broken and lying on his farmland. Sarkar handed it over to the local police.
A drone was found from a village farmland within 300 metres from the Indo-Bangla border in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district on Saturday.
Border Security Force (BSF) officials who examined the drone, however, said that it was not equipped with any camera. BSF said that it was made in China.
The drone was first spotted by a farmer Pankaj Sarkar around 6:00 am when he went to his farmland. The drone was broken and lying on his farmland. Sarkar handed it over to the local police.
As the farmland was located within 300 metres of the international boundary the BSF was alerted. Later, BSF officials went to the spot to examine the drone.
“The model number was S-500. No one has come to claim the drone. We didn’t find any camera fitted to it,” said SS Guleria, DIG BSF (South Bengal Frontier).
Preliminary investigation revealed that another villager Vipul Bakshi had spotted a flying object, with a light blinking on it, around 10 pm on Friday night. It crashed in a farmland.
“Further investigation is going on,” he added.
Among all states West Bengal has the longest and one of the most porous international boundaries. The state shares a 2216 km long international border with Bangladesh. It also shares around a 100 km long border with Nepal and 183 km border with Bhutan.
The Indo-Bangladesh border, particularly in West Bengal, is also one of the most porous borders. Data placed by the union ministry of home affairs before the Parliament in March 2020 shows that in 2017, 2018 and 2019 security agencies arrested 1175, 1118 and 1351 people along the entire stretch of the Indo-Bangla border in India.
