Soldiers of China’s People’s Liberation Army intruded over 20 km into Indian territory in the Chaglagam area of Arunachal Pradesh on August 11 and stayed there for about four days before returning. This ironically became known on a day when the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA were discussing the modalities of conducting a joint military exercise in November in China.
Top government sources told this newspaper that Indian Army tents pitched on Indian territory, very close to India’s perception of the Line of Actual Control (the de facto border with China), are usually vacant and only used by the Indian Army’s Long-Range Patrols (LRPs), but when on August 11, an Indian LRP reached these tents, they found a Chinese long-range patrol team occupying some of these tents. The Chinese troops at first refused to move out of the area, but home ministry sources said that according to information gleaned from local sources and the security agencies, the Chinese