Indian soldiers 'beaten to death and mutilated' by Chinese - Money

India has said its soldiers were mutilated after being beaten to death by Chinese troops and revealed the nail-studded clubs used at the disputed Himalayan border.

Twenty Indians were killed in the clash on Monday night, the first deadly conflict between the two nuclear-armed countries since 1975.

China said it suffered 43 casualties, but did not specify whether any of its men had been killed in the grisly hand-to-hand combat in the Galwan Valley, Ladakh.

The Indians today claimed that after their men were savaged with nail-studded clubs, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army mutilated their corpses.

No bullets were fired as per a peace treaty which bars firearms within 2km of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the line drawn down the 17,000ft-high valley after India’s defeat in the 1962 Sino-Indian War.

In the latest developments from the battle at the top of the world:

India’s external affairs ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava said he wanted the situation resolved responsibly and warned China: ‘Making exaggerated and untenable claims is contrary to this understanding.’
India’s government-owned railway firm cancelled contracts worth £50million given to the Chinese to build 260 miles of freight railroad.
The Telecoms Ministry in Delhi has ordered state-owned companies to avoid Chinese-made upgrades to its 4G infrastructure.
A funeral for Colonel B Santosh Babu, fatally wounded with clubs and rocks when he approached the Chinese encampment to make peace, was held in Suryapet.
China yesterday broadcast images of live-fire drills of artillery and tanks blowing apart the Tibetan plateau, where thousands of PLA troops are based to deal any Indian threat.

The Indians today claimed that after their men were savaged with nail-studded clubs, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army mutilated their corpses. No bullets were fired as per a peace treaty which bars firearms within 2km of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the line drawn down the 17,000ft valley after India’s defeat in the 1962 Sino-Indian War.

Family members pay their respects at the coffin of Colonel B Santosh Babu, the Indian commander slain after trying to appease the Chinese. Col. Babu’s mother Manjula told the New Indian Express: ‘I lost my son, I cannot bear it. But he died for the country and that makes me happy and proud.’ His father B Upendar stoically told The Times of India : ‘I was always aware that one day I could hear what I heard today, and I was mentally prepared for it. ‘Everyone dies but it is a privilege to die for the country and I am proud of my son.’

Indian army officers carry the coffin of Colonel B. Santosh Babu for his funeral in Suryapet, about 90 miles from Hyderabad, India on Thursday

At least 20 Indian soldiers, including a colonel, were killed and at least 43 Chinese men were wounded or killed on Monday night along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), a disputed border in the Himlayas (the red territory is controlled by India, and the beige and grey stripes, Aksai Chin, is Chinese but claimed by India, the white line which surrounds is what Indian believes its border should be, whereas the black line was agreed after then 1962 Sino-Indian War – a heavy defeat for India)

Colonel B Santosh Babu (left) was one of first men killed as the confrontation on the Ladakh border boiled over on Monday. His mother Manjula said: ‘I lost my son, I cannot bear it. But he died for the country and that makes me happy and proud.’ Another confirmed dead was Naib Subedar Mandeep Singh (right), from Patiala in Punjab

Patch of uninhabitable desert that India and China have been fighting over for centuries

The Himalayan border between India and China has been disputed for centuries, but the two countries have been fighting over it most recently since the 1960s.

In the 18th century it was fought over by the Russian, Chinese and British empires, and after India gained independence ownership of the region became more confused.

China values the region because it provides a trading route to Pakistan, and recent hostilities have been sparked by fears in Beijing that India will cut it off from the crucial overland corridor.

The current official border between the two was set by Britain and is known as the McMahon line. It is recognised by India but not by China.

In reality, the border between the two countries is on Line of Actual Control (LAC) where Indian and Chinese forces finished after the Sino-Indian War of 1962.

Aksai Chin, the site of the latest tensions, is located in India according to the official border but is claimed as part of the Chinese region of Xinjiang by Beijing.

It is an almost uninhabited high-altitude scrubland traversed by the Xinjiang-Tibet Highway.

The other disputed territory is hundreds of miles away to the east of Tibet.

The 1962 Sino-Indian War was fought on these two frontiers as Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru put it, a struggle over land where ‘not even a blade of grass grows.’

In addition to the disputed border, China had seized Tibet ten years before and accused India of trying to to subvert Beijing’s interests by granting asylum to the Dalai Lama.

There was also a Cold War element and India wanted to see if the US would back it in a confrontation against communist China.

Delhi had ignored the desolate corner of the subcontinent which allowed the Chinese to build a military road through it during the 1950s to connect the province of Xinjiang to Tibet.

The Indian discovery of this highway was a major factor which led to ferocious clashes leading up to the war.

Yet the Indians had just two divisions posted at the border when the Chinese invaded, never suspecting that Beijing would be so bold as to cross the McMahon Line.

The war lasted for one month and left more than 2,000 dead on both sides. It was a heavy defeat for India and led to the new border, the LAC, being established and pushing India back from McMahon line.

Much of the reason for the ongoing conflict is the ill-defined border, the result of a confused status the region had during the colonial era, which was made more murky by India’s war with Pakistan in 1947.

Chinese interest in the region surrounds President Xi Jinping’s centrepiece ‘Belt and Road’ foreign policy to have vast infrastructure throughout the old Silk Road.

Beijing fears that increased Indian presence in the region will cut off its trade route to Pakistan.

The two sides have blamed each other for recent hostilities but analysts say India’s building of new roads in the region may have been the fuse for May’s standoff.

Both sides have dispatched reinforcements and heavy equipment to the zone.

This has become a point of searing anger on the Indian side, India Today reported, as hawks in Delhi continue to pressure the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make a forceful retaliation.

Responding to China’s claim to the valley today, India’s external affairs ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava said both sides have agreed to handle the situation responsibly.

‘Making exaggerated and untenable claims is contrary to this understanding,’ he said in a statement.

Both sides accused each other of instigating the clash between their forces in the valley, part of the disputed Ladakh region along the Himalayan frontier.

Media reports said senior army officers of the two sides met on Wednesday to defuse the situation, but there was no confirmation from either side.

The Indian soldiers, including a colonel, died of severe injuries and exposure in the area’s sub-zero temperatures, officials said.

The clash escalated a standoff in the disputed region that began in early May when Indian officials said Chinese soldiers crossed the boundary at three different points, erecting tents and guard posts and ignoring warnings to leave.

That triggered shouting matches, stone-throwing and fistfights, much of it replayed on television news channels and social media.

According to the Indian account, efforts at disengagement had unravelled last week when troops dismantled a camp set up by the Chinese on their side of the border.

Scuffles broke out and several men were injured, but the Chinese only retreated briefly to flood back in greater numbers over the weekend, with stones being hurled on Sunday.

On Monday these skirmishes boiled over into a full-scale brawl atop a ridge-line above the Galwan River, with many men said to have died after plunging into the frigid glacial waters below.

‘They came hurtling down like free-falling objects,’ one source told AFP. Postmortem examinations on those killed showed that the ‘primary reason for death is drowning and it looks like they fell from a height into the water because of head injuries,’ an official told AFP.

Among the dead was Colonel B. Santosh Babu, Commanding Officer of the 16 Bihar regiment, who had gone to meet with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army commanders in an attempt to discuss an end to recent tensions.

But the 37-year-old was fatally injured along with another soldier as the Communist forces took up iron rods and hurled rocks wrapped in barbed wire at their counterparts.

Around 40 minutes after Col. Babu’s delegation was attacked, the same Indian unit – this time led by a Major – returned to the confront the Chinese at their encampment once again.

The Indians attacked the Chinese outpost with ferocity and, according to their accounts, seriously wounded around 60 PLA soldiers.

All of this took place in the river valley and lasted well over three hours, despite attempts by a Chinese brigadier to wave the white flag.

Club-like weapons and rocks featured heavily in the battle and for this reason many of the troops are said to have sustained grievous head wounds.

By the time the fighting relented just after midnight many of the men who had fallen into the river had already succumbed to hypothermia, with other corpses being fished out at sunrise.

Another six Indian soldiers were still said to be missing.

Col. Babu’s mother Manjula told the New Indian Express: ‘I lost my son, I cannot bear it. But he died for the country and that makes me happy and proud.’

His father B Upendar stoically told The Times of India: ‘I was always aware that one day I could hear what I heard today, and I was mentally prepared for it.

‘Everyone dies but it is a privilege to die for the country and I am proud of my son.’

Uninhabitable desert: The Galwan Valley where the mass brawl between the Indian and Chinese forces took place. The Chinese interest in the region surrounds President Xi Jinping’s centrepiece ‘Belt and Road’ policy to have vast infrastructure throughout the old Silk Road. Beijing fears that increased Indian presence in the region will cut off its trade route to Pakistan

Communist state TV yesterday showed footage of artillery and tanks blowing apart the desert landscape as some 7,000 infantry simulated assaults against enemy fortified positions around 600 miles from Monday’s deadly skirmish in the Galwan River Valley

Heralded as heroes who will not die in vain, Sepoy Gurbinder Singh, 22, (left) had been in the army for two years; and his slain comrade Gurtej Singh, 23, (right) from Mansa district

Indians burn images of Chinese President Xi Jinping in Bhopal on Tuesday after news of the violence at the border broke

Activists of Sanskriti Bhchan Manch shout slogans as they stage a protest against China, holding posters of Chinese President Xi Jinping, in Bhopal, India, 16 June

The Colonel is survived by his mother Manjula, father Upender, wife Santoshi, nine-year-old daughter Abhigna and four-year-old son Anirudh.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi today warned New Delhi not to underestimate Beijing’s determination to safeguard what it considers its sovereign territory.

His comments came in a phone call on Wednesday with his Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

Mr Wang said China demanded that India conduct a thorough investigation and ‘harshly punish’ those responsible.

An Indian Border Security Force soldier walks near a check post along the Srinagar-Leh National highway on Tuesday

Indian army soldiers rest next to artillery guns at a makeshift transit camp before heading to Ladakh, near Baltal, southeast of Srinagar this week

‘The Indian side would best not make an incorrect judgment of the situation, would best not underestimate China’s strong determination to safety its sovereign territory,’ Mr Wang said in a statement issued by the foreign ministry.

Communist state TV yesterday broadcast live-fire military drills on the Tibetan plateau around 600 miles from Monday’s deadly skirmish in the Galwan Valley.

Footage showed artillery and tanks blowing apart the desert landscape as 7,000 infantry simulated assaults against fortified positions.

It remains unclear when the training took place, but CCTV said it was carried out by the PLA stationed in the Tibetan Military Region, which deals with threats from countries around Tibet, including India.

RECENT TENSIONS: Believed to have been filmed in mid-May on the banks of Pangong Lake, a mile into Indian territory, footage purports to show Indian forces battering a People’s Liberation Army soldier and smashing up a Chinese armoured car

RECENT TENSIONS: Pro-Beijing social media accounts recently posted images purporting to show Indian troops battered and bound with rope on the banks of a lake in the disputed region on the Himalayan border

China claims about 35,000 square miles of territory in India’s north east, while India says China occupies 15,000 square miles of its territory in the Aksai Chin Plateau in the Himalayas, a contiguous part of the Ladakh region.

India unilaterally declared Ladakh a federal territory while separating it from disputed Kashmir in August 2019, and China was among the handful of countries to strongly condemn the move, raising it at international forums including the UN Security Council.

Thousands of soldiers on both sides have faced off over a month along a remote stretch of the 2,100 mile Line of Actual Control, the border established following a war between India and China in 1962 that resulted in an uneasy truce.

Key dates in India-China border tensions

Asian regional superpowers India and China share a long history of mistrust and conflict along their lengthy border, and tensions flared up this week in a deadly clash between troops.

The world’s two most populous nations and nuclear-armed neighbours have never even agreed on the length of their ‘Line of Actual Control’ frontier, which straddles the strategically important Himalayan region.

Recent decades have seen numerous skirmishes along the border, including a brief but bloody war in 1962.

Here are some key dates:

– Nehru’s 1959 Beijing visit –

India inherited its border dispute with China from its British colonial rulers, who hosted a 1914 conference with the Tibetan and Chinese governments to set the border.

Beijing has never recognised the 1914 boundary, known as the McMahon Line, and currently claims 90,000 square kilometres (34,750 square miles) of territory – nearly all of what constitutes India’s Arunachal Pradesh state.

The border dispute first flared up during a visit by India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to Beijing in 1959.

Nehru questioned the boundaries shown on official Chinese maps, prompting Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai to reply that his government did not accept the colonial frontier.

– 1962 Sino-Indian War –

Chinese troops poured over the disputed frontier with India in 1962 during a row over the border’s demarcation. It sparked a four-week war that left thousands dead on the Indian side before China’s forces withdrew.

Beijing retained Aksai Chin, a strategic corridor linking Tibet to western China. India still claims the entire Aksai Chin region as its own, as well as the nearby China-controlled Shaksgam valley in northern Kashmir.

– 1967 Nathu La conflict –

Another flashpoint was Nathu La, India’s highest mountain pass in northeastern Sikkim state, which is sandwiched between Bhutan, Chinese-ruled Tibet and Nepal.

During a series of clashes, including the exchange of artillery fire, New Delhi said some 80 Indian soldiers died and counted up to 400 Chinese casualties.

– 1975 Tulung La ambush –

This skirmish was the last time shots were officially reported to have been fired across the disputed border.

Four Indian soldiers were ambushed and killed along the dividing line in Arunachal Pradesh.

New Delhi blamed Beijing for crossing into Indian territory, a claim dismissed by China.

– 2017 Doklam plateau stand-off –

India and China had a months-long high-altitude standoff in Bhutan’s Doklam region after the Indian army sent troops to stop China constructing a road in the area.

The Doklam plateau is strategically significant as it gives China access to the so-called ‘chicken’s neck’ – a thin strip of land connecting India’s northeastern states with the rest of the country.

It is claimed by both China and Bhutan, an ally of India. The issue was resolved after talks.

– 2020 Ladakh confrontation –

Tensions have boiled over again after several Indian and Chinese soldiers were injured in a high-altitude fist fight on the border at Sikkim state in early May.

Indian officials said that within days, Chinese troops encroached over the demarcation line further west in Ladakh region and India then moved in extra troops to positions opposite.

Last week both countries said they would peacefully resolve the face-off after a high-level meeting between army commanders.

But on Monday, India said three of its soldiers were killed in a violent clash in the strategically important Galwan Valley on the Himalayan frontier.