Chinese PLA troops are reportedly laying a network of optical fibre cables south of Pangong Lake in Ladakh.
According to reports, the Chinese troops were digging in for the long haul despite high-level talks aimed at resolving a standoff there.
Such cables would provide forward troops with secure lines of communication to bases in the rear and have recently been spotted to the south of Pangong Tso lake in Ladakh, India TV reported.
According to a news agency report there had been no significant withdrawals or reinforcements on either side since the foreign ministers of the two countries met last week,.
“It is as tense as earlier,” the agency quoted a top security official as saying.
“Our biggest worry is that they have laid optical fibre cables for high-speed communications,” the official said, referring to the lake’s southern bank, where Indian and Chinese troops are only a few hundred metres apart at some points.
“They have been laying optical fibre cables on the southern bank at breakneck speed,” he said.
Indian intelligence agencies noted similar cables to the north of the Pangong Tso lake around a month ago, another official said.
The authorities were alerted to such activity after satellite imagery showed unusual lines in the sand of the high-altitude deserts to the south of Pangong Tso.
These lines were judged by experts – and corroborated by foreign intelligence agencies – to be communication cables laid in trenches.