NORTHEAST : Soon after receiving information about the sighting of unidentified flying objects near the Imphal airport on Sunday, the Indian Air Force (IAF), scrambled its Rafale fighter aircraft to search for them.

The sighting of the UFO over the Imphal airport happened around 2:30 pm, after which a few commercial flights were affected yesterday.

“Soon after information about the UFO near the Imphal airport was received, a Rafale fighter aircraft from a nearby airbase was scrambled to go and search for the UFO,” defence sources told ANI.

“The aircraft equipped with advanced sensors carried out low-level flying over the suspected area to look for the UFO, but it did not find anything there,” they said, adding that after the first aircraft returned, another Rafale fighter was sent for the search however, the UFO was not seen around the area.

“The agencies concerned are trying to find out the details of the UFO as there are videos of the UFO over the Imphal airport,” they said.

Soon after the Imphal airport was cleared for flying, the Shillong-headquartered Eastern Command of the Indian Air Force stated that it had activated its Air Defence response mechanism without giving any specific details of the steps taken by them.

The Eastern Command, in a post on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter), said, “IAF activated its Air Defence response mechanism based on visual inputs from Imphal airport. The small object was not seen thereafter.”

The Rafale fighters of the Indian Air Force are deployed at the Hashimara air base in West Bengal and keep flying from different air bases in the eastern sector along the China border.

The Rafale fighters recently also took part in the mega Air Force exercise Poorvi Akash along the China border, where all major assets of the force participated along with the troops of the Army.