The Chinese military has confirmed that it has found five Indian youths who went missing last week on the Chinese side of the border, and the two sides are discussing the details of handing them over to Indian authorities, an Indian official said. On Monday, a dispute erupted again between Chinese and Indian troops on the disputed border.
In a tweet on Tuesday (September 8), India’s Minister of State for Youth Affairs and Sports Kiren Rijiju said, “The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has responded to a hotline message from the Indian Army. They confirmed that the missing young man from Arunachal Pradesh was found on their side.”
An Indian official said that the two sides were consulting on how to hand over the men to Indian authorities.
According to Indian media, the civilians, who went missing last Friday in the Upper Subansiri area of Arunachal Pradesh, were porters and guides for the Indian army. They were part of a seven-member team that had gone to the jungle to hunt. Last Friday, the young men’s families reported their disappearance via social media.
Indian media reported that two of them were able to “escape” and that they returned home to inform the families of the other five that they had been taken by Chinese troops from the Sera-7 area of China’s Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), on the border with the McMahon Line. After receiving the report, the Indian military sent a hotline message to the Chinese military at the border point.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, when asked about the five missing Indian youths on Monday, said he did not have the details, but said China never refers to “Arunachal Pradesh,” which it calls the southern Tibetan region.
On Monday, Chinese and Indian troops once again confronted each other along the disputed border. In a statement, the Chinese military accused Indian soldiers of firing threatening shots at Chinese border guards. The Indian Army, for its part, said in a statement that it was the Chinese border guards who fired in the air in an attempt to intimidate Indian soldiers. The statement also denied that Indian soldiers had crossed the Line of Actual Control. On June 15 of this year, deadly clashes erupted between Chinese and Indian troops in the area.
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