India surrendered the detained People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldier on Wednesday after he had crossed the Royal Line of Control (LAC) in Ladakh on Sunday, the Chinese military said.
It was handed over to Chinese border troops early Wednesday, the PLA said in a short statement.
“According to the relevant agreement between China and India, a Chinese soldier who was requested by the herdsmen to help find a lost yak was handed over to Chinese border troops by the Indian side in the early morning of October 21,” the statement said. Posted by PLA Daily on social media.
The PLA had confirmed on Monday night that one of its soldiers had disappeared throughout the LAC on Sunday night and had requested the Indian army to return him according to protocol.
The Indian army said on Monday that it had detained a Chinese soldier, identified as a colonel, in the Demchok sector in eastern Ladakh after he had been diverted through the LAC.
He had also received a request from the PLA asking for the whereabouts of the soldier.
The incident comes amid current border tension with China in eastern Ladakh, where both sides have carried out a heavy deployment of soldiers and military equipment.
Issuing a statement on the missing PLA soldier Monday night, Western Theater Command spokesman Colonel Zhang Shuili said the soldier disappeared while searching for lost yaks on the night of October 18; did not identify the soldier.
“After the incident, the Chinese border guards took the initiative to inform the Indian side of the situation as soon as possible and hoped that the Indian side would assist in the search and rescue,” Zhang said in the statement.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a press conference on Tuesday that China hopes India will hand over the soldier as soon as possible and works with China to promote the implementation of the consensus reached in the seventh round of talks.
“India’s decision (to return the soldier) is a gesture of goodwill ahead of the eighth round of talks,” Sun Shihai, an expert from the South Asian Research Center of the University of Sichuan, told the Global Times.
In September, Chinese state media branded five Indians who had crossed the border in Arunachal Pradesh as spies and were detained by the PLA.
The five civilian porters from the Tagin tribe of Arunachal Pradesh disappeared in early September.
Before their release in the second week of September, the state nationalist tabloid Global Times claimed in a report that five were “spies” working for the Indian military.
The five had disguised themselves as “hunters,” according to the report, citing an anonymous source, and adding that they were “intelligence personnel from India.”
“They recently crossed the border between China and India and entered Shannan prefecture in Tibet,” the report says.
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