The Indian Army on Wednesday returned a detained People's Liberation Army soldier who had crossed over the disputed mountainous border with China last weekend.
"According to the relevant agreement between China and India, the Chinese PLA soldier, who went missing while helping local herdsmen find a lost yak near the China-India border on Sunday, has been returned to the Chinese border troops by the Indian army early on the morning of October 21, 2020," according to China military online, the news agency of the People’s Liberation Army.
Beijing offered no new details about the circumstances of their soldier's disappearance, although he is the first Chinese soldier to be detained by the Indian army since border tensions escalated in April.
Earlier on Monday, the Indian Army stated that it had provided food, clothing and other unspecified aid to the Chinese soldier to “protect him from the vagaries of extreme altitude and harsh climatic conditions” and that he would be released “after completion of formalities.”
The two sides have held several rounds of military and diplomatic talks to diffuse border tensions said to have been escalated over infrastructure development in the Ladakh region, although no result has been seen. The militaries of the two Asian nations continue to reinforce military capability in Himalayan region.
