FLY ANOTHER DAY

Pigeon arrested by Indian police on suspicion of being a SPY for Pakistan

A PIGEON has been detained by police on the India-Pakistan border after being accused of being a spy.

The alleged operative was found on the Indian side having been painted pink and was carrying around on its foot a ring with numbers on.

Senior Superintendent of Kathua Police Shailendra Kumar Mishra told the The Times of India: "Locals captured it near our fences. 

"We have found a ring in its foot on which some numbers are written.

"Further investigation is underway."

Police said though birds have no boundaries and many fly across international borders during migration, a coded ring tagged to the captured pigeon's body is a cause for concern as migratory birds don't have them.

The pigeon will remain in police custody until they have finished their investigations.

In 2015 another pigeon was intercepted, this time in Manwal village two and a half miles from the border.

One officer told NDTV: "This is a sensitive area as it is just along International Border.

"Infiltration is also quite common along this route."

Tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours have reached boiling point after India carried out air strikes against Pakistani militants last year in Balakot - located in a remote valley in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The strikes followed a suicide bomb attack, involving a car packed with explosives, on an Indian security convoy in Pulwama which left 40 soldiers dead.

Relations between the two countries have been fraught since their since independence from Britain in 1947.

There have been three full-scale conflicts since then and only the 1971 war, which was over the liberation of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), was not caused by the so-called Kashmir issue.

Both countries, which began developing nuclear weapons in the 1970s, claim control over Muslim-majority Kashmir but only control parts of it.