JAMMU, July 9: India has installed Israel-made thermal imagers on its mountainous borders with Pakistan to snoop on militants sneaking into its zone of the disputed Himalayan state, officials said on Tuesday.

Israeli thermal imaging detectors are the precursor of an array of other military imports that would be deployed soon on the Line of Control (LoC), a highly-placed defence ministry source added in New Delhi.

In Jammu, officials said Israeli imagers were deployed after extensive tests conducted with the gadgets in Kashmir’s frontier districts of Poonch, Rajouri, Nowshera, Akhnoor, Uri, Kupwara and in Kargil and Drass.

Each apparatus costs nearly Rs2 million and can track body heat emissions, experts here said.

“The equipment is so sensitive that it clearly differentiate between human beings and animals,” a military expert said, adding that the sensors have a range of up to five kilometres.

“This is a successful (installation of) equipment to stop infiltration from across the border and recently the army killed six Pakistani militants on the basis of the data from the thermal imagers,” the source said.

An Indian defence ministry spokesman in New Delhi told AFP that the imagers have been deployed at “sporadic” places along the 440-kilometre LoC.

Defence officials here said Indian military researchers, too, were on the threshold of deploying locally-developed electronic radars on the LoC.

“A new version of censors developed by the defence ministry research development department had been sent to army experts to conduct field trials,” an official said.

The Indian defence ministry has, however, said other imported electronic sensors are unlikely to be in place before elections in the disputed state in September/October this year.

A proposal to deploy ground sensors to track infiltration into Kashmir by militants was made by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a visit to New Delhi on June 12.

India has also sought a full array of Israeli military equipment, including the Phalcon Airborne Early Warning and Surveillance System.—AFP