NEW DELHI: Going on record for the first time, a former ITBP Chief has termed as “evil design” of Chinese Army the month-long face-off with the Indian military in Chumar area in Ladakh division last year which saw both sides entering into “serious” altercations.
Terming the reasons for the standoff as part of Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) machinations, Subhas Goswami, who was heading the force at that time, wrote about an eye-ball-to-eye-ball situation with the PLA in Chumar, located 210 kms northeast of Leh town of Jammu and Kashmir.
The standoff was one of the longest between the two sides on this mountainous border which has witnessed a number of incidents between ITBP/Army and PLA owing to the respective sides’ perception of the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
Writing a short memoir to “prove his assessment of the force”, the former Indo-Tibetan Border Police force Director General said the incident will remain “etched” in his mind.
Goswami was chief of ITBP, which guards the 3,488 km Sino-Indian border, between November, 2013 to December, 2014.
“It was about the eye-ball-to-eye-ball standoff with the Chinese Army at Chumar in Ladakh. On receiving information that the PLA was preparing to build a road in our territory, ITBP along with the Indian Army rushed to the spot and physically prevented the Chinese Army from carrying out their evil design.
“This stout defense led to serious altercations and jostling between the opposing troops,” Goswami wrote in his memoirs he penned for the 54th anniversary of the force which was celebrated this month.
He said the PLA expanded the area of conflict to near by locations by “heli-lifting its forces from the rear.”
“Indian Army also mobilized its forces and standoff in four/five different places in the Ladakh sector continued simultaneously for about a month.
“The ITBP used its animal transport in the conflict to great effect. The Chinese could not build an inch of road and finally had to go back to their barracks,” Goswami wrote in the article titled ‘A Life Changing Experience’.–PTI
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