China Hands Over Detained People, Says Indian Army

Five Indian nationals from a remote eastern state who had been detained by Chinese authorities in a region bordering Tibet were handed over to Indian authorities on Saturday, the Indian army said.

"Individuals will now be quarantined for 14 days as per Covid-19 protocol and will thereafter be handed over to their family members," Lieutenant Colonel Harsh Wardhan Pande, a spokesman for the Indian army, said in a statement.

Pande said the five youths had "inadvertently strayed" across the de-facto border while foraging and hunting, adding that two other such incidents had taken place this year in India's Arunachal Pradesh state, which borders China.

However, a Chinese state-backed tabloid said the five were Indian intelligence agents dressed as hunters, disputing claims that they had been kidnapped.

Bilateral relations have been unusually tense since a clash at a disputed border area in June that killed 20 Indian soldiers, with an unknown number of Chinese casualties.

On Tuesday, following reports that five Indians from the state of Arunachal Pradesh had gone missing, an Indian minister said that the People's Liberation Army confirmed they had been found in China.

Their disappearance coincided with a border confrontation that week in the western Himalayas, during which both accused the other of firing in the air.

The two sides have long observed a protocol avoiding the use of firearms in the undemarcated frontier, though violence has erupted in the past.

On Thursday, State Councillor Wang Yi and Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar met in Moscow and agreed to de-escalate the border tensions. (Reuters)