An Indian Army convoy moves along a highway leading to Ladakh, at Gagangeer in Kashmir's Ganderbal district on 18 June 2020. File photo/Reuters/Danish Ismail
Reuters
MUMBAI, India, 21 June 2020
China lost at least 40 soldiers in a clash with India at their disputed border this week, a government minister has said, as the nuclear-armed countries remained locked in confrontation on the frontline on Sunday.
China has not said anything about any losses in the hand-to-hand combat that took place in the heavily contested Galwan Valley in the western Himalayas, in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed and at least 76 injured.
“If 20 were martyred on our (Indian) side, then there would have been at least double the casualties on their (China) side,” VK Singh, the minister for roads and transport, told TV News24 in an interview broadcast late on Saturday.
Singh, who is a former army chief, did not provide any evidence to support his statement. He said China historically never accepted any war casualties including in the 1962 conflict with India.
China’s state controlled Global Times said earlier there had been casualties on the Chinese side but did not elaborate.
Singh said the Indian side had handed over Chinese troops who had strayed into Indian territory after the violent standoff.
India’s defence ministry spokesman Bharat Bhushan Babu refused to comment on Singh’s interview.
The nuclear-armed Asian neighbours traded accusations on Saturday that the other had violated their shared de facto border, an area that this week became the site of their deadliest clash in half a century.
Troops remain locked in a face-off at several locations along the poorly defined Line of Actual Control, despite talks between local commanders to de-escalate.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has criticised China for escalating border tensions with India.
Now global times mouthpiece of CCP tweets:
“The reason why China did not release casualties number is that China also wants to avoid an escalation. If China releases the number which is less than 20, the Indian govt. would come under pressure”
I don’t know whether to laugh or to puke.
China is facing backlash on social media over not publishing details of their casualties. Chinese netizens erupting in anger and asking their govt to show respect and learn from India.
The Chinese occupation forces were ready by damming the river to drown the unsuspecting Indian soldiers–this according to the Google earth images.
Why were the Indians unprepared? Maybe S swamy the hero of anti Indira emergency and the old pro-Beijing anti-Tibet activists encouraged by Nehru’s desire to put down the White colonials he had so long been forced to imitate?
In any court of law on this planet a determination of India Tibet border will show that China is the interloper.
It’s a spin by the Government. The Indian Jawans were overwhelmed by the PLA troops who were waiting nearby and reinforced as soon as the clash took place. The Chinese had pre-planned this attack and they were ready while the Indian troops were not.
The Jawans were not armed contrary to official statement because its human nature that when your life is in peril, you shoot in self-defence, rule or no rule. How can the Jawans witness their leader murdered and still not shoot the killers in retaliation? It’s not normal human nature.
This was another 1962 repeating itself. It was pre-meditated onslaught on India to humiliate India and its military institution. It’s also the second Himalayan blunder of Modi-Xi Bhai-Bhai saga. Modi had put his trust in Xi and visited China 18 times, the greatest number by any Indian PM. Modi’s claim of “intimate” friendship has bit the dust just as that of Nehru with Chou and Mao.
The Chinese had built roads from P8 to P4 without the knowledge of India and dammed the Galwan river. According to Ladhakis, India’s patrol in the area is far in between while the Chinese are now poised to occupy the whole of Pangong Tso. They said, there was no Chinese presence before but now they are coming to take the whole lake.
The Indian military and the political elite must think of the nation instead of seeing it only through the prism of party affiliation. This is a national crisis. India is being gradually taken over by communist China while Indian leaders are still harbouring notion of “friendship” and “peaceful co-existence”.
Communist China doesn’t believe in such lofty ideals. It’s mission is conquest by any means. The illusion of friendship with China must be buried for good to save India from another foreign conquest.