Much like the Kerala Police and Telangana Police, the Delhi Police’s Dwarka division tweeted on April 11 that the Delhi Police is using surveillance drones to enforce the nationwide lockdown placed to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. The Delhi government said that it is using surveillance drones that can record footage, and send alert messages to lockdown violators. “If Drone suspects any gathering, the announcement is made for immediate dispersion through the speaker attached to the Drone [sic],” it said. The Dwarka division of the Delhi Police has partnered with TechEagle Innovation, Drone Federation of India, and Skyrise Innovations to deploy these drones. TechEagle’s founder and CEO, Vikram Singh, told MediaNama that his company started deploying surveillance drones in Delhi on April 5. They first started with the Delhi Police’s Central division, and are currently working for other divisions including North, South, and South East. TechEagle Innovations is owned by online food delivery company, Zomato. https://twitter.com/DCPDwarka/status/1248944178257518593 “There are at least 15 operational surveillance drones surveilling various parts of Delhi on any given day, and the maximum number of drones we’ve deployed in a single day was 20,” Singh told us, and added, “but the number is increasing every day”. Some of the operators flying these drones are from Tech Eagle, but a majority of them have been crowdsourced. Apart from surveillance drones, there are also about 2 siren drones currently deployed in Delhi. These drones simply play siren sounds to alert people, and don't have any video recording capability, Singh claimed.…
