India says Chinese troops set up a camp on its side of the ill-defined frontier in Ladakh region in the middle of April.
The platoon of Chinese soldiers slipped across the boundary into India in the middle of the night, according to Indian officials.
Activists of India's right-wing Shiv Sena, shout anti-China slogans and burn a Chinese flag during a protest against an alleged Chinese incursion. India says Chinese troops set up a camp on its side of the ill-defined frontier in Ladakh region
The platoon of Chinese soldiers slipped across the boundary into India in the middle of the night, according to Indian officials
They were ferried across the bitterly cold moonscape in Chinese army vehicles, then got out to traverse a dry creek bed with a helicopter hovering overhead for protection.
They finally reached their destination and pitched a tent in the barren Depsang Valley in the Ladakh region, a symbolic claim of sovereignty deep inside Indian-held territory.
So stealthy was the operation that India did not discover the incursion until a day later, Indian officials said.
China denies any incursion, but Indian officials say that for two weeks, the soldiers have refused to move back over the so-called Line of Actual Control that divides Indian-ruled territory from Chinese-run land, leaving the government on the verge of a crisis with its powerful northeastern neighbor.
Indian officials fear that if they react with force, the face-off could escalate into a battle with the feared People's Liberation Army. But doing nothing would leave a Chinese outpost deep in territory India has ruled since independence.
'If they have come 19 kilometres into India, it is not a minor LAC violation. It is a deliberate military operation. And even as India protests, more tents have come up,' said Sujit Dutta, a China specialist at the Jamia Milia Islamia university in New Delhi.
'Clearly, the Chinese are testing India to see how far they can go,' he said.
That is not China's stated view.
Activists of the right-winged student's organization Akhila Bharatiya Vidya Parishad (ABVP) burn an effigy representing China. China denies any incursion, but Indian officials say that for two weeks, the soldiers have refused to move back over the so-called Line of Actual Control
'China strictly complies with the treaty and documents on maintaining peace and stability in the border region between India and China,' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said last week.
'The Chinese patrol troops did not go across the Line of Actual Control, not by even one step," she said.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2318389/Two-Chinese-incursion-leaves-India-verge-crises.html#ixzz2SAnmktuu
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