Police got the message, written on a piece of paper and pasted on the yellow balloons, translated. It read: “Modiji, Ayyubi ki talwaren abhi hamare paas hain. Islam zindabad. (Modiji, Ayyubi’s swords are still with us. Long live Islamism)”.

The balloons were first seen by a villager near his house on Friday, who handed them over to the police.

Notably, Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal was visiting the border districts of Gurdaspur and Pathankot on Saturday to monitor the arrangements made for the villagers who have been evacuated in the apprehension of retaliation from Pakistan to the army’s surgical strikes on terrorist launchpads in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) recently.

In July, the police had recovered a balloon from Jhande Chak village near Dinanagar . It had a picture of the Pakistani flag painted, along with ‘I love Pakistan’ written on it.

Three heavily-armed terrorists in army fatigues had stormed a police station at Dinanagar town in Gurdaspur district last year, killing seven persons, including a superintendent of police (SP), before they were gunned down in a day-long operation by the security forces.