News Desk :
Chinese soldiers grabbed a swathe of Indian territory along the disputed Ladakh border, claims a Bangla daily of the country on Saturday.
In its report, the Anandabazar Patrika said Chinese troops have taken position along the border, including patrolling point-14, barring Indian troops from reaching points 10, 11, 11-A and 13.
However, China has not constructed any structure on the captured land, it said.
Bottleneck or Y Junction Patrolling Point is among the captured land.
This has forced India to suspend surveillance on several hundred square kms of area, the report mentioned.
On June 15, Indian and Chinese troops brawled for several hours in the Galwan Valley near point 14, using stones and sticks with nails embedded in them to beat each other, killing 20 Indian soldiers and injuring at least 76 more. China has not disclosed how many casualties its troops suffered. Meanwhile, China has deployed large numbers of troops and weapons along a disputed Himalayan border in violation of bilateral agreements, India’s foreign ministry has said, accusing Beijing of escalating tensions and triggering a deadly clash last week.
“At the heart of the matter is that since early May, the Chinese side had been amassing a large contingent of troops and armaments along the LAC,” foreign ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava said in a briefing in New Delhi on Thursday, referring to the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the de facto border between the Asian nuclear powers.
Srivastava said “this is not in accordance with the provisions of our various bilateral agreements,” referring to treaties that include a 1993 one that dictates that both sides will maintain limited border deployments.
India had “to undertake counter deployments” because of the Chinese buildup, he said as New Delhi acknowledged for the first time it has matched Beijing in massing troops at their contested Himalayan border, reports Aljazeera.
China has blamed India for the clash – the deadliest between the two nuclear-armed neighbours for at least five decades – and said Indian troops attacked Chinese officers and soldiers.
Responding to the heightened Chinese presence last month, India also deployed a large number of troops along the LAC, Srivastava said, leading to face-offs in the Ladakh region of the western Himalayas.
