‘PIA’-brand toy flies 115km, sparks alert

Hoshiarpur: An aeroplane-shaped toy balloon bearing the acronym of Pakistan International Airlines landed in an Indian field 115 km east of the international border, triggering a police investigation.A villager found the "PIA"-marked vinyl object on Sunday morning at Sataur. Hoshiarpur senior superintendent of police, Sandeep Malik, said a forensic team had found no electronics, surveillance equipment, or hazardous material inside.Local authorities believe it to be a novelty item that drifted across the international border. "It was a toy plane," Hoshiarpur DSP (rural) said. "People fill these toys with air usually, but apparently, this one had hydrogen inside."The gas likely allowed the balloon to travel a significant distance from Pakistan before deflating and landing in the field. Police have recorded the incident in a daily diary report (DDR) and secured the object. A similar PIA-branded vinyl aircraft had landed in a border-adjacent field of Baloh village recently. In Dec 2024, three of these balloons had landed inside Rajasthan in a space of 35 days. The landing at Rajouri district's Sarhoti in March 2026 mirrored the Hoshiarpur case, with no electronic or surveillance payloads attached.In Jammu and Kahsmir's Akhnoor sector during Jan and Feb, multiple high-visibility balloons drifted across the Line of Control (LoC). One carried Pakistani and US currency notes, a mobile number, and a scannable QR code, shifting investigators' focus toward potential psychological tactics or primitive signalling.Demonstrating the distance these hydrogen-filled items can travel, one of the PIA-themed aircraft balloons bypassed civilian airspace in Feb and descended into a secure Indian Air Force technical zone in Agra, prompting a defence inquiry.Punjab is on maximum alert following two coordinated explosions, one outside the Border Security Force (BSF) Punjab Frontier headquarters in Jalandhar and the second along the perimeter wall of the Army Cantonment in Amritsar. MSID:: 131154780 413 |