Alert sounded over suspicious balloons

Gurgaon, Jan 27: An alert was sounded in the tiol Capital Region after a suspicious balloon was noticed in Gurgaon on Wednesday afternoon, police said.

Informed sources said the Delhi Police issued the alert after Gurgaon Police first spotted the balloon in its area.

Indian Air Force and Delhi's Indira Gandhi Intertiol Airport authorities were also alerted.

The development comes a day after the IAF said it shot down "an unidentified balloon" in Barmer district of Rajasthan.

Gurgaon Commissioner of Police vdeep Singh Virk said: "At about 3.15 p.m., patrol guards at the IAF Station on the Gurgaon-Faridabad road reported the sighting of an unidentified red-and-white balloon of about one-metre diameter, flying 1-1.5 km high towards Aya gar in Delhi from the Gurgaon-Faridabad Road side.

"The Gurgaon police control room alerted its counterparts in Delhi and Faridabad. No balloon has been recovered as yet but further enquiries are in progress."

An unidentified balloon-like object detected by the Indian Air Force was on Tuesday shot down by a fighter aircraft in Rajasthan's Barmer district, over 515 km from here.

"Between 10.30 - 11.00 a.m., unidentified balloon-shaped object was picked up on IAF radar, which was unidentified and was in our airspace. An IAF fighter was launched, which intercepted the object and brought it down. We have launched further investigations into it," a source in the IAF told IANS.