Owner Of Pigeon Detained In India For Spying Demands Its Release

Last week, we reported that authorities in India arrested a pigeon on suspicion that it is a trained spy for Pakistan.

According to reports, the alleged spy bird was carrying a “coded message,” attached to its foot. It was alleged to have flown from across the border that separates Indian and Pakistan-controlled parts of Kashmir, according to reports.

Due to its unusual pink colour, the bird caught the attention of villagers in the disputed region of Kashmir and they immediately called the regional police, who detained the bird on charges of spying.

The pigeon had reportedly wound up in the house of a woman in the Indian-administered Kashmir region, who had caught it and handed it over to the Border Security Force.

An investigation into an alleged spying operation by Pakistan was announced soon after and the bird was taken into custody, and placed in a cage.

“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 such rings,” Indian police told the Times of India newspaper.

Spy pigeon | E-News Pakistan

The bird’s owner is now demanding the release of his bird.

The Pakistani villager has come out to dispute the charges, saying that the pigeon was his and the ring around its leg isn’t an elaborate code, but his phone number, in case something happened to the bird.

Following the announcement of the capture of “another Pakistani spy pigeon” by India’s Border Security Force, Pakistani newspaper Dawn managed to track down the bird’s alleged owner, a man named Habib Ullah.

Ulah is from the village of Bagga-Shakargarh, just 4 kilometres from the border with the disputed Kashmir region.

He explained that to celebrate Eid, he painted the wings of some of his birds and released them as symbols of peace, love and tolerance.

He and others in Bagga-Shakargarh have been protesting the pigeon’s arrest over the last few days, showing off his collection of pink-painted pigeons as proof that there was nothing special about the captured one.

Ullah is urging Indian prime-minister Narendra Modi to return the pigeon with “full protocol and due respect”.

Interestingly, this isn’t the first time that India has captured a so-called “spy pigeon” from Pakistan. A similar case made news headlines in 2015, when a pigeon was captured in the village of Manwal, four kilometers.