India's Kerala has become the first state in the country to have a drone surveillance system in all police districts.
On Thursday, Chief Minister of Kerala Pinarayi Vijayan distributed the drones to all police districts and also handed over the drone pilot licences to the specially trained UAV pilots who are going to operate them.
Vijayan also launched indigenously developed anti-drone software.
Several police officers in Kerala are undergoing specialized training at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras and at drone labs on how to operate small and medium-sized unmanned aerial vehicles.
Be it investigating crime, law and order situations, or disaster management, the drone surveillance system will empower the districts' police in monitoring any such incidents.
"Our police drones are used in difficult situations and sometimes in areas that are usually inaccessible. So our personnel has to be specially trained," Inspector General (IG) P. Prakash of the Cyberdome of Kerala Police told Indian news agency.
According to the reports, all 20 police districts in the state will initially be given one drone each.
The anti-drone system could help in ferreting out UAV threats covering a five-kilometer of radius, while immobilizing and seizing them, the drone forensic lab would work on recovering data from the malicious UAVs for detailed analysis, Prakash concluded.