Tamil Nadu Police have achieved a major milestone in modernisation with its commandos, for the first time, deploying and operating an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) on their own to monitor and control the movement of crowd and vehicles during the 59th death anniversary of Dalit leader Immanuel Sekaran here on Sunday.
The commandos, specially trained in operating UAVs, test flew the high definition camera fitted UAV in the presence of Superintendent of Police N. Manivannan and demonstrated the vehicle’s prowess of flying at 300 metres height and covering a radius of four kilometres, while beaming accurate images of all kinds of movements.
Ever since the district police introduced UAVs in 2012 as part of beefing up security, a year after the violence broke out, resulting in the death of six people in police firing, the Centre for Aerospace Research (CAR), Madras Institute of Technology (MIT), Anna University had been helping the police with UAV operation.
For the first time this year, a nine-member commando team from Chennai, led by Ashok, Inspector of Police, deployed and operated the vehicle on its own.
The team made the first sortie here on Saturday and the vehicle covered a radius of 4 km. As the vehicle hovered around, the high definition camera fitted in it, beamed spotless pictures to the special control room set up near the Taluk police station.
They were trained by K. Senthil Kumar, Director of CAR, MIT, Anna University and his team for three months, Vignesh, Sub Inspector of Police and liaison officer of the team, said. The commandos were well-trained to fly the vehicle at regular intervals after recharging the battery, he said. Each sortie would last 30 minutes, he added.
“This is the first time, the Commandos were operating the UAV on their own,” Dr. Senthil Kumar told The Hindu over phone from Chennai. Police personnel had earlier operated UAVs during the ‘Thai Poosam’ festival in Palani and in Marina during pongal but with the field support of research scholars of CAR, he said.
After reaching an agreement with the State government, the University had supplied four UAVs to the police force and “we are happy the University-developed product is used by the end users,” he said.
Thanks to the thrust given for modernisation, Tamil Nadu Police could soon emerge as the first force in the country to have a UAV wing, he hoped.
