India deploys drones to monitor public movement in occupied Kashmir

ISLAMABAD: Indian police have started using drones to keep a close eye on the movement of people and anti-state demonstrations in occupied Kashmir.

A routine activity, it was also carried out manually by the police personnel in the past, Kashmir Media Service reported. Local police officers told media that using drones would help the administration conduct surveillance in Kashmir, besides cutting down the manual effort put into the mapping exercise.

A senior police official said more than 100 drones were provided to the police force in October and November, 2019, and that they were now being used to conduct mapping exercises for setting up elaborate profiles of localities, which include details such as number of houses, shops, roads, religious places, and other establishments.

Informed sources said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government would use this information to execute its plan to implement a demographic change in the occupied Muslim-majority region.