The News Craving
Newscraving Desk:
Jammu
The Jammu and Kashmir police Friday shot down a drone carrying 5 kg IED in Kanachak area of Jammu, officials said.
A senior police official said that it was in the wee hours today that a general information was received by Jammu district police that a drone has been spotted near International Border in Kanachak. Following this, a Quick Reaction Team (QRT) deployed in the area as part of Anti Drone strategy was pressed into action.
“Drone was spotted and police personnel shot it down,” the official said. “The IED material has been seized and investigation as well as physical and technical examination is going on,” he added.
The official said that the drone was shot down around eight kilometer inside the international border (IB) in Kanachak. “We are ascertaining the purpose of the IED material as to whether it was supposed to be air-dropped or transported to some other location,” he said.
Additional Director General of Police Jammu zone Mukesh Singh Friday said that police shot down a hexa-copter.
Addressing a press conference, Singh said that police had received a specific information that Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) rebel outfit was planning to drop a payload through a drone near Akhnoor.
He said that the serial number of the flight controller used in the drone is just one digit different from the one drone that was earlier shot down at Aknoor.
“The IED material was packed and it was almost a ready-made IED just to be triggered by connecting a few wires. Preliminary analysis suggested that it was a hexa-copter with six wings fitted with a flight controller and a GPS,” he added.
He said that the packed IED was supposed to be dropped by drone and to be picked up by someone.
“We waited for the suspect but none turned up,” he said.
The ADGP said that the drone shot down at Kathua is an assembled one with its parts manufactured from Taiwan and Hong-Kong.
Asked whether there is any link between today’s recovery of the drone and the recent attack on Air Force Station Jammu, the ADGP said that “JeM has assembled many drones with the same series and there is just a difference of one digit in the serial number of the one drone recovered earlier at Akhnoor and today’s one.”
He said that the drones recovered in the recent past are being used to drop payloads including AK-47 rifles and IED material. “Such drones can travel up to 20 km distance depending on the payload,” the ADGP said, adding that so far 16 AK-47 rifles dropped by the drones have been recovered by the Jammu police.
(KNO)