Security agencies have sounded an alert along the Sino-India border after local residents, including a village head, got several telephone calls from spies either from Pakistan or China about Army dep
Security agencies have sounded an alert along the Sino-India border after local residents, including a village head, got several telephone calls from spies either from Pakistan or China about Army deployment along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
According to the sources, the caller, posing himself as either a colonel or a local official, made queries about the Army presence in the area and the timings of their movement. Sources further said that recently the sarpanch (village head) of Durbuk village, located between Chang La and Tsangte village, received a call in which the caller asked whether outstanding issues with the Army had been sorted.
The sarpanch, who was sitting inside an Army camp at the time of receiving the call, got suspicious and enquired from the caller about his identity. Despite the caller identifying himself to be from deputy commissioner’s office, the sarpanch snubbed him and said he should get in touch with the army. The number was shared with the army which found that the number appearing on the sarpanch’s phone had been masked and it was a computer generated call.
Later, the Army found that several people in villages along the Sino-Indian border had been receiving calls from such unknown numbers and in a few cases basic information had been shared by the villagers out of pure ignorance. The Army took the help of the state administration and a mass campaign has been launched to educate people in general and those living along the Sino-Indian border not to share any information with any unidentified caller.
Meanwhile, expensive SUVs have for the first time been deployed at high-altitude border posts of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) along the Sino-India border to transport troopers.
Four white-coloured SUVs, two Toyota Fortuner and as many Ford Endeavour, with a price tag of around Rs 25 lakh each, have been deployed by the border guarding force at some of its forward locations over 13,000 feet above the sea level at Burtse and Dungti in the Ladakh sector and Menchuka, over 6,000 feet, in Arunachal Pradesh.
No other border guarding force or army formations in forward areas have ever used high-end SUVs for troops.
