Did a UFO come over Kolkata?

A resident says he saw one on Monday morning

KOLKATA: This is some star-spangled banter across town! Imagine getting up in the middle of the night to drink a glass of water, only to find an unidentified flying object (UFO) winking at you from beyond the window frames? Stuff that dreams and science fictions are made of?

But this is what Farhan Akhtar, the deputy general manager of H&R Johnson, claims he saw and recorded on his Sony DVD handy cam from 3.20 am till 5.40 am on Monday morning from his east Kolkata apartment.

Akhtar recalls getting up to drink water. When he returned to his bedroom, his wife, who had been awake, told him to draw the curtains since the couple’s ninth floor apartment had become cold, thanks to a chilly breeze blowing.

“When I went to draw the curtains, I saw through the window, which faces the east something that looked like an abnormally big star at a 30 degree angle in the sky,” says Akhtar. Surprised, he quickly got out his handycam and started recording the phenomenon.

What he saw, after zooming in, seemed like a white ball with flaming sides which changed colour and shape after few minutes and seemed dotted with red bulbs but with a white patch in the middle. Soon it began to resemble a Jaguar-shaped plane with a blue flame at the top and yellow and green in between. At times it acquired a cylindrical shape.

With the break of dawn, the mysterious object stayed put till about 6.20 am but Akhtar found it difficult to capture the images because of the sunlight. He was sure it was not a plane since he normally sees aircraft from the nearby airport from his apartment.

Air traffic control sources at Kolkata airport say there was no information from the radar controller on the sighting of such an object nor did any pilot report anything irregular. Weather balloons, launched by the Met department, commonly get registered but, it seems, the ATC has never registered an unidentified object.