2001-11-15 - Bangalore (India) - Unknown

At the outset, I would like to make it clear that at the time of the sighting, I had scant knowledge of the internet (way back in 2001) and was not aware of the existence of a UFO report centre, whether online or offline. I was 16 years old and was studying in the second year of college. I do remember that I recorded the EXACT date and time of the sighting along with a verbal description of the nature of the UFO, but cannot find the original record anywhere. I also wish to state that the reason I am submitting this report is because of a second sighting I made barely a week ago, in the same country but a different city hundreds of miles away from the first and a full nine years later. I am 24 years old and havehad two sightings in my life thus far.
Situation and description:

It was summer and I was on the terrace at our place in Bangalore, India, at around seven in the evening. My brother had just headed back downstairs and I lingered on for a while longer as the weather was pleasant. I lay down on the ground and stared at the sky star gazing. I don’t remember which constellation I was looking at exactly, but I spotted a bright shining light from the corner of my eye, a little distance away from the spot I was looking at. As I first looked at it I thought it was a star because that’s exactly what it appeared to be (almost as bright as Sirius). Then I realized it was moving, albeit very slowly, to the right. As I watched it suddenly seemed to accelerate for a while before stopping abruptly and changing direction at an angle of ninety degrees. I sat up as I thought my eyes were tricking me, but the object did not stop and was definitely not an illusion or a trick of light. It stood out against the pitch black sky, which ! I thought was remarkable considering Bangalore’s light pollution. The object continued to zig-zag along a roughly linear axis,and it was this zig-zag motion at high speed that amazed me for I have never seen an aircraft capable of such abrupt change of direction at such high speeds before. As it proceeded along its path it changed seemed to me it was changing colour, from the dull yellow, starlike tinge it originally had(at least when I spotted it) to blue and finally to a dull green flicker. This ‘phenomenon’ lasted for a good couple of minutes, disappearing behind the silhouette of the taller building next to our own for some twenty-thirty seconds before reappearing on the other side. It then disappeared in a matter of moments, with the intensity of light decreasing to zero and vanishing. This was all I saw.

I have seen weather balloons before, and I am absolutely certain what I saw was no such thing for without adequate propulsion I think it is impossible to move as rigidly and discretely as this body did. Same reasoning also rules out any form of burning/incandescent matter floating toward the earth. As for the object itself I know absolutely nothing of its form, shape or even size because all I saw was a bright spot of light. Curiously enough, this was a few months after news of the Mir space station’s ‘demise’ and its break-up in the atmosphere. Clearly this had nothing to do with the ‘sighting’, in my opinion, considering the time-gap between the two events and the obvious impossibility of debris acquiring wings of its own and flying about. Also, there is an air-force base in Bangalore, but I enquired about and have been told Indian Airforce crafts are NOT allowed to fly over the city airspace. And in any case I know India isn’t capable of such ‘top-secret’ flight testing programmes, yet.

I have no choice but to brand this sighting an UFO.


((NUFORC NOTE: Witness indicates that date of the sighting is approximate. PD))