Agartala, April 7: Tension gripped a border village in South Tripura district on Monday morning after locals discovered a suspected Bangladeshi drone inside Indian territory.
According to a local villager Sadhan Mazumdar, a farmer first spotted the mini drone in a paddy field near the Indo-Bangladesh border at Ballamukha, under Bilonia subdivision, around 300 meters from the barbed wire fencing and immediately informed the local police.
He claimed that a few days ago, they had seen a drone flying over the area from the direction of Bangladesh, appearing to conduct an aerial survey. They suspect the recovered device might be the same one.
Soon after being alerted, a police team rushed to the spot and seized the drone.
Both the Tripura Police and the Border Security Force (BSF) have launched an investigation to determine the origin of the drone and the purpose behind its flight in the sensitive border region.
Swapan Sen, the police officer leading the investigation, stated that in the morning they received information about a drone found near the residence of Sadhan Mazumdar, a former police constable. Acting on the tip-off, the police team rushed to the location and recovered a drone equipped with a camera.
He further said that, according to local residents, the drone had been seen flying in the area over the past few days, and there is suspicion that it may have originated from the Bangladesh side of the border.
The discovery of the drone has triggered concern and curiosity among locals, who fear possible surveillance or cross-border intrusion activities.
Tripura shares 857 km of the total 4,096.7-kilometre-long India-Bangladesh border, and although more than 97 percent of Tripura’s international border on its three sides is fenced with barbed wire, cross-border crimes such as human trafficking, smuggling, and drug trafficking remain rampant, posing a persistent challenge for border security forces, especially in a few vulnerable unfenced pockets.
