Hunting for ‘kasturi’ deer, five Arunachali-Tagins picked up by Chinese PLA

Amid the ongoing deescalating talks between Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and his Chinese counterpart General Wei Fenghe in Moscow, MP, Tapir Gao today confirmed that five boys from Arunachal Pradesh's Nacho near the McMahon line in Upper Subansiri district have been abducted by the PLA, reports Senior journalist Sanjib Kr Baruah.

New Delhi: A team of five hunters armed with muskets belonging to the Tagin tribe from Nacho village in Arunachal Pradesh’s Upper Subansiri district were picked up by a team of Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers on Thursday (September 3), a Lok Sabha Member of Parliament from the area told ETV Bharat.

“There were six people in the hunting team. Five were taken away by the PLA while one escaped. I spoke to their relatives at Nacho and they have confirmed Thursday’s incident,” Tapir Gao, MP, said on the phone.

The incident is expected to add to the more than four-month-long military tension between Indian and China which is escalating and showing no signs of easing despite ongoing military and diplomatic talks including one between the defence ministers of the two Asian giants on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting in Moscow on Friday night.

The five were picked up from an area about two days walk north from Nacho towards the Rezangla pass which is located on the MacMohan Line (ML), which is the de-facto border between China and Arunachal Pradesh.

Placing the point where the five were picked up as midway from Nacho to the Rezangla pass, Gao, known to be vocal about Chinese intrusions in his state, said: “What is of concern is the distance the PLA team may have come inside Arunachal Pradesh.”

China doesn’t recognize the ML and claims India’s Arunachal Pradesh as its own territory and refers to is as ‘Southern Tibet’.

Heavily forested and very mountainous, this stretch of the Upper Subansiri district area doesn’t have any roads and is devoid of any communication links. Army teams undertake ‘long-range patrolling’ or long marches through the difficult terrain to reach the ML.

This is the time of the year when the locals hunt for the famous Himalayan white-bellied ‘musk’ deer which is prolific in the high altitude areas of Arunachal Pradesh above 2,500 metres.

The male deer secretes a substance from its abdomen called ‘musk’ (‘kasturi’ in local language and Hindi) that is uses to attract females for mating.

In very high demand worldwide, a gram of deer ‘musk’ is very expensive in the Indian and international market. The ‘musk’ is used in expensive perfumes and in medicines.

Listed as an endangered species, locals nevertheless hunt the deer for the ‘kasturi’ which is sold to middlemen dealing with such exotic products.

Former Arunachal Pradesh parliamentarian Ninong Ering named the five locals in a tweet as ‘Prasad Ringling, Tanu Bakar, Ngari Diri, Dongtu Ebiya and Toch Sigkam’.

A Tweeter handle @Prakash Ringling identifying himself as Prasad Ringling’s brother sought government and Indian army help to take immediate action to bring these boys back to their homes.