The pigeon, which landed near Manwal village, nearly two miles from the Pakistani border, immediately raised the suspicions of a 14-year-old boy who noticed an Urdu message stamped on its body reading ‘Tehsil Shakargarh, district Narowal’.
The boy then ran to the nearest police station to hand the bird in.
Police X-rayed and held the bird under arrest, listing it as a ‘suspected spy’, according to The Times of India.
Senior police superintendent Rakesh Kaushal told the newspaper: “Nothing adverse has been found, but we have kept the bird in our custody.
“This is a rare instance of a bird from Pakistan being spotted here. We have caught a few spies here. The area is sensitive, given its proximity to Jammu, where infiltration is quite common.”
The bird was found near Jammu and Kashmir, areas claimed by both India and Pakistan.
This isn’t the first time a pigeon has been arrested in India for spying on Pakistan’s behalf. In 2010 a pigeon was held in a local police station for the same reason.
Unsurprisingly, a few people on Twitter found the news really funny.
But pigeons have been used as spies before – during the Second World War, carrier pigeons were used by both sides to transmit information.