5 missing Arunachal youths found in China, handover underway: Kiren Rijiju

Guwahati: Union Sports Minister and Arunachal Pradesh Lok Sabha MP Kiren Rijiju on Tuesday evening said that the Chinese army has found the 5 youths from the frontier state who recently went missing near the international border with China.

Taking to Twitter, Rijiju said that further modalities to hand the persons over to the Indian side are being worked out.

"China's PLA has responded to the hotline message sent by the Indian Army. They have confirmed that the missing youths from Arunachal Pradesh have been found by their side. Further modalities to handover the persons to our authority are being worked out," the Minister wrote in his tweet.

On Sunday, Rijiju had said in a tweet that the Indian Army had sent a hotline message to its PLA counterparts near the Arunachal border and was waiting for a response.

The five civilians, who had gone missing on Friday from the Upper Subansiri district of Arunachal Pradesh, were working as porters and guides for the Indian Army.

They were part of a seven-member group that went for hunting in a jungle but were reported missing by their families through social media posts.

The posts, that claimed that the youths had been abducted by the 'Chinese PLA', soon went viral and were shared by Arunachal Pradesh politicians Ninong Ering and Tapir Gao, one from the BJP and the other from the Congress.

A certain Prakash Ringling wrote that his brother and four others were abducted by the PLA in the Sera-7 area on the Indo-China border. As per reports, all five missing youths belonged to the Tagin tribe.

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