Miriam Taron was assigned to India nearly 500 kilometers from where he was arrested.
Guwahati:
Miriam Taron, 17, is still having a “nightmare” about the more than 200 hours he had to spend in Chinese PLA custody since January 18 when he was arrested near the Line of Actual Control (LAC). ) in the Upper Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh .
Miriam was reunited with her family in the village of Zido in the Tuting circle – this area was one of the last settlements on the Indian side, a few miles from the LAC. Although he returned home healthy, his father Opang Taron said that Miriam is still “a bit traumatized” from his “trial”. More than 200 hours of being blindfolded and a constant fear of being “harmed and killed” haunted him during his captivity, his father has claimed. He was also handcuffed, he added.
“My sons were captured from an area that we consider to be our Indian territory, at best it can be called a no-man’s land, but they have never crossed into Chinese territory. India has laid some footprints in the area and your son or mine never crossed it. So it’s the Chinese PLA that really gets involved,” said Mr. Taron.
The father said that Miriam was arrested on the evening of January 18 after 6 p.m. at a gunfire. “He told me that he was immediately blindfolded and tried to escape but couldn’t because there were more than a dozen PLA soldiers surrounding him. His hands were tied at the time. Maybe they thought he was. he was a spy or something so they pushed him and beat him too He tried to retaliate a little bit he told me he pushed a Chinese soldier Then they used He used a lighter spark to pass through a lighter device. He couldn’t see it but he could feel it. The next day he wasn’t tortured, at least according to what he said. for us,” Opang Taron told NDTV.
The area from where Miriam was captured is the same area in the Tuting circle that the Chinese Army entered in 2018 with road construction equipment and was trying to build a 3-4km road inside India when the The locals and the Indian Army protested and it led to a stalemate until the Chinese withdrew. This area is outside of Fishing village (last Indian village near LAC). Locally, the area is known as Siyunla-Lungthazor.
“We have a customary ritual where we go hunting and then dry the game and give it to our sister’s family. My son and other young men went hunting. This is the custom. our custom, there’s nothing wrong with this,” added the father.
“However, my son recounted that he was well fed, mainly meat. Also, because it was very cold, he really kept him warm. They removed his blond hair near the Kibithu border. before handing it over,” he added.
Miriam was delivered to India nearly 500 kilometers from where he was arrested, at the Damai border point.
“Neither my son nor the Chinese can communicate with each other. The language barrier was so great that when he tried to explain that he was not a spy but a traditional hunting boy, they didn’t understand. a word. They tried to bring in a local tribal language interpreter, my son reported, but to no avail,” said Mr. Taron.
