A huge Indian military operation to checkmate separatist rebels in the country’s northeastern borders with Myanmar has started, officials told Indian TV channels on Wednesday.Forty thousand Indian troops-perhaps all units under the Third Indian Army Corps based in Dimapur-were involved in the operation that covers the states of Nagaland and Manipur, military officials said.India’s junior Home Minister Khiren Rijuju told the ‘India Today TV’ that Myanmar was “fully cooperating” in the operations.But he refused to discuss “operational details”. Rijuju alleged that Pakistan’s ISI was in close contact with the Northeastern insurgents, trying to disrupt return of peace in the region.But, when asked whether there was a ‘Chinese hand’ in the revival of insurgency in India’s Northeast, he refused to comment.Military officials said the Myanmar army was involved in a ‘parallel operation’ on their side of the border to ‘choke the separatists’.They said Indian and Myanmar forces were into ‘sharing real-time intelligence’ on the separatists’ movements.The India Today TV channel showed some detailed footage of Naga and Manipuri rebels training in a camp inside Myanmar. It appears the video had been recovered from a top National Socialist Council of Nagaland – Khaplang (NSCN -K) leader Khumio Abi Anal, who was arrested in Manipur’s Chandel district, not far from the site of the June 4 ambush in which 18 Indian soldiers were killed. The NSCN-K had claimed responsibility for the attack.Anal seems to have told interrogators after his arrest that the NSCN-K and Manipur’s Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) were preparing to attack Indian forces in the northeast to avenge special forces raids on their border camps on June 9. This seems to have prompted the current Indian military operations.
