In September 2013, a small village called Bhattenda in West Bengal, India, suddenly became the focus of local and international media. For several consecutive nights, over 10,000 villagers collectively witnessed an unidentified flying object emitting a strong light hovering in the night sky—it was even mistakenly rumored to be a Pakistani spy drone.

📍 Location	📅 Date	🔍 Category
Bhattenda, West Bengal, India	2013-09	Mass Sighting / Military Investigation

The incident began in mid-September. Residents of Bhattenda village and the nearby Jalpaiguri district noticed that around 8 PM each night, an orange-red glowing object “10 times brighter than Venus” would appear in the sky. This object would linger for several hours, sometimes moving slowly, sometimes remaining completely still, before disappearing in the early morning hours.

Villagers initially thought it was espionage activity by China or Pakistan. The news spread quickly, triggering widespread panic. Some villagers said they had never seen anything like it before and feared it might be a precursor to war. Local newspapers reported it as a headline for days, plunging the entire region into anxiety.

Indian police and local government officials tried to calm the public, suggesting it might be Venus or a weather balloon. But this explanation didn’t hold up—Venus doesn’t move that fast across the sky, and a weather balloon wouldn’t appear at the same time and place every night.

Due to mounting public pressure, the Indian Air Force (IAF) decided to intervene. The IAF dispatched a helicopter and an investigation team to the site for on-the-ground inquiry. Air Force officials conducted prolonged observations using infrared equipment and binoculars.

The IAF’s final conclusion was: “The sighted object is Venus, combined with the collective psychological effect of the villagers.” But this conclusion was quickly refuted by astronomers and villagers—Venus does not emit orange light, nor does it exhibit clear three-dimensional movement.

More intriguingly, a few days after the incident, officials from India’s National Security Department suddenly visited Bhattenda and issued a “confidential warning” to the villagers. This move led many to believe even more strongly that the matter was not as simple as the government claimed.

The Bhattenda incident remains one of India’s most widely known mass UFO sightings and one of Asia’s most significant UAP events in recent years.

📚 Sources

• Indian Air Force, “Bhattenda Incident Investigation Report” (2013)
• Times of India, “Mysterious Light Over Bhattenda” (September 2013)
• UFO Research India, “West Bengal Mass Sighting Analysis” (2014)