On the morning of May 10, Punjab’s Ferozepur town was on edge as India and Pakistan clashed in the skies above.

The international border was merely 10 km away, and the previous night, despite a blackout, a Pakistani drone had injured three in a nearby village.

The mood eased around 5 pm, when US President Donald Trump announced that India and Pakistan would stop all military activities as part of a ceasefire.

But reports soon emerged of cross-border shelling and Pakistani drones being spotted in Jammu and Kashmir.

By 8.45 pm, the blackout was back in Ferozepur. On the terrace of a hotel, television crews stared into the night sky, expecting drones to appear any moment. When the air raid sirens went off at 10 pm, their cameras were rolling in anticipation.

But then, all of a sudden, the street lights were switched back on. Many wondered if the authorities had made a mistake: was the town safe?

This confusion was not limited to Ferozepur. Across the length of India’s border with Pakistan as well as the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, drone activity was reported for three consecutive nights.

The first night, the Indian government confirmed there had been ceasefire violations by Pakistan– presumably a reference to the drones. Scroll asked the Ministry of Defence to confirm if Pakistani drones entering Indian airspace would constitute a violation of the ceasefire. The ministry is yet to respond.

But subsequently the government has either denied them or played them down, a move that has had little success in calming fears on the ground.

This has led some to speculate if drones in India’s night skies are going to be part of the “new normal” – a term used by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to refer to India’s aggressive strategy to counter cross-border terrorism from Pakistan.

Moments after the ceasefire

The confusion began on the evening of May 10, when two hours after India’s foreign secretary confirmed that the two countries had agreed to stop all firing, explosions were heard across Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir, The chief minister of the union territory put out a tweet.

An hour later, the Press Trust of India cited government sources who said that Pakistan had “violated bilateral understanding reached this afternoon”.

But minutes later, state broadcaster DD News quoted unnamed army sources to report “no blasts in Srinagar” and “no firing along LOC now”. It vaguely added, “happened earlier”.

The tweet has since been deleted, but other defence journalists echoed the claim, with one adding: “Drones came in. Most have gone back.”

However, around 11 pm that night, foreign secretary Vikram Misri confirmed that there had been “repeated violations of the understanding arrived at earlier this evening” between the two countries. He added that armed forces were giving an adequate and appropriate response to the violations.

Air Vice Marshal (retd) Manmohan Bahadur told Scroll that either “rogue elements” in the Pakistani army were responsible for the drone incursions after the ceasefire or it could be the Pakistani army’s “way to bait our armed forces into responding with greater firepower”.

However, Lt Gen (retd) Hooda had a different view. “Ceasefire means stop firing, not stop surveilling,” he told Scroll. “I think both countries would like to find out each others’ military movements after the ceasefire. Drones are a good way to do that.”

Chaos in Barmer

It was not just unidentified government “sources” who spoke in contradictory voices. Local authorities in border states added to the confusion.

In Rajasthan’s Barmer district, the district collector Tina Dabi announced a rollback of all security measures within an hour of the ceasefire on May 10. “All citizens can now return to normal public life,” the district administration tweeted at 6.49 pm.

Within a couple of hours, at 8.40 pm, the administration put out an “urgent alert” about an “incoming air raid”.

“What’s going on?” asked one user. “Sometimes you say go out, then you say stay indoors. What’s happening?”

A minute later, the district authorities tweeted that the previous orders urging caution and blackouts were reinstated “in view of the current circumstances”.

On the morning of May 11, the authorities again announced that “all types of activities are permitted” – but by evening it had declared a blackout. At 8.50 pm, it sounded an alert because of “incoming drones activity spotted”.

But an hour and half later, it dismissed reports of the army shooting down a drone in Barmer as “completely factually incorrect.” “The district administration fully refutes all kinds of rumors circulating on social media,” it added.

Multiple users asked if the earlier alert about the drones were true. “Don’t confuse people,” said one of them.

Defense analyst and journalist Manoj Joshi told Scroll that the Barmer administration’s decision to rollback security measures within an hour of the ceasefire was not wise. “They should’ve been more careful,” he said. “Perhaps they could have studied the situation for another hour or so.”

Hooda too described the rollback as “premature”. “It would’ve been good to wait and watch before one takes a call like that,” he told Scroll.

More confusion

The confusion was not limited to the first night alone. On May 12, Pakistani drones were seen in Samba in Jammu and Kashmir and in Jalandhar in Punjab.

The first alert in Jammu came from the newswire agency ANI, which shared visuals of “red streaks” and “explosions” in Samba at 9.20 pm, purportedly of Pakistani drones being intercepted by Indian air defence systems.

At 9.50 pm, ANI cited unnamed army officials who said that “comparatively, a very small number of drones have come in the Samba sector” and there was “nothing to be alarmed” about. “Small or big is not the question,” asked journalist Rahul Pandita. “The question is: why are they still coming?”

Joshi told Scroll that ceasefires usually take some time to settle down. “I don’t think these drone incursions [from Pakistan] are meant to attack,” he said. “They are likely reconnaissance drones meant to test our air defence systems, like the frequency of our radars. They are basically gathering intelligence.”

He added that drones from Pakistan are spotted over Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir even in peacetime. “They are used for drug smuggling and arms smuggling,” he said. “These could be doing that but we don’t know that yet.”

In Punjab’s Jalandhar too, the district commissioner Himanshu Aggarwal reported drone sightings on May 12 and tried to play down their threat. At 9.15 pm, Aggarwal announced a partial blackout after “reports of drone sightings” near the village of Suranassi.

“We are verifying them. There is nothing to worry as confirmed by officials of [the] armed forces,” he added, with a smiling emoji.

The threat was serious enough for a Delhi-Amritsar Indigo flight, due to land at 9.15 pm, to return to the capital after taking off.

At 10.45 pm, Aggarwal said that one surveillance drone had been shot down around 9.20 pm near the Mand village. “It has also been informed that no drone activity has been seen in Jalandhar since 10 pm,” he added, repeating: “Nothing to worry.”

This purported strategy to play down drone sightings has not gone down well in Punjab. “Flights are being disrupted, blackouts imposed, schools and colleges shut in certain districts. There is no ceasefire for lakhs of Punjabis, especially students preparing for competitive exams,” wrote Chandigarh-based journalist Man Aman Singh Chhina. “The official denials and ‘all is well’ narrative is tedious.”

Shortly after midnight, anonymous officials returned to ANI to make a baffling statement: “After initial sightings of drones in Jammu, Samba, Akhnoor, and Kathua, the Indian Army confirms no drone sightings. The ceasefire situation prevails.”

This begs the question: do cross-border drone incursions constitute a ceasefire violation?

Bahadur said that logically, they do. “There are no two ways about it,” he said.

Hooda added that if the drones were meant to surveil, they are not ceasefire violations, but a violation of India’s sovereign airspace.

So far, there has been no official word on the May 12 drone activity in Jammu and Kashmir by the Indian government. There were no reports of Pakistani drones in the Indian airspace on May 13.

On the morning of May 13, Shiv Sena (UBT) politician and opposition leader Priyanka Chaturvedi alleged that the Indian government was suppressing news of Pakistani drone attacks. She asked if this made sense when “real time planes are returning mid air and civilians' lives are at stake”.

“In fact, these should be reported extensively to call out the Pakistani bluff and lies on ‘ceasefire’,” Chaturvedi added.