BSF is also gearing up for a busy winter along the Pakistan border in Punjab.
An all-women band set up by the Border Security Force (BSF) recently is likely to be the highlight of the BSF’s marching contingent on Republic Day next month. The 30-odd musicians in the woman band of the BSF, along with other participants like the force’s camel contingent and the motorcycle-borne daredevils, promise to add glitter to the 2024 celebrations that will be attended by French President Emmanuel Macron as chief guest.
Taking forward the initiative of improving women’s participation, the BSF has also decided to increase their deployment in the force by including an all-women horse-mounted team for patrolling along the Punjab frontier.
“Women sub-inspectors and constables are undergoing training and they would soon be deployed in horse-mounted patrolling along the Punjab frontier,” said an official.
At present, just 5% of personnel in the border force are women in each of its 18 battalions in Punjab but this figure is likely to be raised gradually, he said.
Meanwhile, the BSF is gearing up for a busy winter and foggy season along the Pakistan border in Punjab. The force has prepared a standard operating procedure to deal with evolving situations at different locations along the border that witnesses frequent entry of drones loaded with contraband.
Apart from installation of image-detection devices, the BSF has taken care to put in place a topography-specific drill in case of suspicion of the presence of a drone in the area.
During the past one month, several attempts by the Pakistani forces to send across contraband on drones have been foiled. A BSF official said in the last one year 500 kg heroin sent by Pakistani agencies across the Punjab frontier has been seized. Almost 60% of the contraband being smuggled into the country across this border is dependent on drones, said the official.
BSF officials said the suspicion of involvement of Pakistani agencies has grown stronger as forensic analysis of captured drones revealed that coordinates of the starting point for all the drones were from near the establishments of the Pakistani Rangers.
A bulk of the confiscated drones were found to be Made in China—of the brand DJ Matrix.
On 17 December, for instance, the BSF conducted an operation after receiving specific information from RPF Attari Railway Station regarding the presence of a drone along with narcotics near Attari.
During the search operation, the BSF troops recovered a drone along with a packet carrying about 500 gm narcotics suspected to be heroin. The packet was wrapped with white adhesive tape and a hook made of rope was attached with the packet. The recovered drone was a Quadcopter (Model: DJI Mavic 3 Classic, Made in China).
A day earlier, another Quadcopter (Model: DJI Mavic 3 Classic, Made in China) was seized from village Dhanoe Khurd in Amritsar district.
A packet was also recovered from the drone. It was carrying around 500 gm of a narcotics item suspected to be heroin. The contraband was wrapped in yellow adhesive tape and a hook made of rope was attached to the packet.
To expose the involvement of both Pakistani agencies and Chinese players, the BSF has started getting all intercepted drones inspected at the forensic lab in Delhi to collect data about the origin of their components.
“The forensic audit gives details related to the take-off point of a drone, the distance covered and the place where all the components of a drone were put together,” said an official.