Imphal Airport UFO and the Rafale Scramble

Bir Tikendrajit International Airport sits 774 m above sea level at Imphal, the capital of Manipur in north-east India. It has one runway and one control tower. The CISF, the federal force that guards Indian airports, handles its security. On Sunday, 19 November 2023, that tower was at the centre of the story.

It began at about 14:00, when a CISF member spotted an object in the sky. Around 14:20, the pilot of a private airline, about to depart, saw it too. At 14:30 the CISF control room phoned Imphal ATC. Flight operations were suspended.

Controllers watched from the tower terrace. The object was small and white. According to the government, it "moved southwards above ATC Tower and remained stationary there for some time." An ATC official told PTI that "The UFO was visible with bare eyes moving westwards of the airfield till 4 pm." Airline staff, local police and members of the public saw it as well. The last sighting came at 16:05. Sunset was at 16:26. After that, the object was gone.

Airport Director Chipemmi Keishing put it plainly. "Due to sighting of an unidentified flying object within Imphal controlled airspace, two flights have been diverted and three departing flights have been delayed." About 500 passengers were reported stranded. A NOTAM was issued, and Gulf News put the suspension at 3 hours 20 minutes.

IAF Eastern Air Command, headquartered in Shillong, was alerted. A Rafale was scrambled from Hasimara Air Force Station in West Bengal. When it came back, a second Rafale went up. Defence sources said 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." Eastern Command closed the chapter: "The small object was not seen thereafter." No radar detection was ever reported. The IAF said it had acted on "visual inputs".

In December 2023, Congress MP Manish Tewari raised the case in the Lok Sabha. He asked whether the government had a policy to protect airliners from UFOs, and whether it had a view on extraterrestrial life. V. K. Singh, then Minister of State for Civil Aviation, gave the written reply. It placed the object "just above the ATC Tower overhead" and said it "was visible till 16:05 IST and thereafter disappeared." Such an object posed a danger to aircraft, the reply said, "because of unpredictable movements of the object." It gave no specific response on policy or on alien life.

The first wire reports spoke of a drone. ANI described "a drone that was very small in appearance", which describes how the object looked, not what it was. Days later, the Kashmir Monitor wrote that the video footage suggested "a white balloon similar to the one encountered in the United States in February". It added that security experts did not rule out a Chinese military spy balloon. No official endorsed the idea.

The Imphal Free Press pointed to the core problem. Nobody knew how high the object hovered, and no good zoom-lens photograph existed. In the paper's words, "it is difficult to say what it is." The DGCA and the IAF were reported to be investigating together. No conclusion has been published.

Officially, the object remains unidentified. Defence sources confirmed that videos exist, but the original witness clip has not been located. The case has a place in Wikipedia's list of UFO sightings in India. WION's Gravitas covered it, and so did The Lehto Files, hosted by retired F-16 pilot Chris Lehto.