Revealed: How China Is Using The Nepal Route To Push Spies And Subversives Into India Through Bihar’s Kishanganj

A plot by China to push in subversives and spies into India through Nepal has come to light with the arrests last week of two Chinese nationals by the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), which guards the India-Nepal border. 

The SSB nabbed two Chinese nationals on two consecutive days last week at the international border in Bihar’s Muslim-majority Kishanganj district.

In July this year too, a 39-year-old Chinese man was arrested by the SSB while he was trying to sneak into India through the border at Kishanganj. 

This has sent alarm bells ringing in the country’s security establishment. The Intelligence Bureau (IB) is now helming a multi-agency probe into this. 

The Chinese infiltrators had Nepalese and fake Indian passports and were trying to pose as Nepalis while entering India. 

For instance, the 48-year-old Chinese man who was arrested by the SSB Thursday (12 October) last week was posing as Gombo Tamang, a Nepali. He had a fake Indian passport that gave his address as Darjeeling in Bengal. 

The SSB, which detained him because he didn’t quite look like a Tamang and spoke Nepali with a very strange accent, contacted the Darjeeling Police to verify his credentials.

The Darjeeling Police found that no passport had been issued to anyone at the address mentioned in the passport that was presented by the Chinese national, when he was challenged by the SSB to prove his citizenship. 

A search of his baggage revealed a genuine Chinese passport. The man is now being interrogated by the Bengal Police and central agencies. 

The other Chinese national who was arrested from the Thakurgang border checkpost of the SSB in Kishanganj district Friday (13 October) last week claimed that he was a Nepali national and had entered India to visit some relatives in Darjeeling district. 

But a search of his possession resulted in the discovery of a Chinese passport that identified the man as Li Xiaokang, 54, a resident of Jiangxi in China. He had a valid tourist visa to visit Nepal. 

Two Nepali nationals were also arrested for helping Li Xiaokang cross over into India. Preliminary interrogation of these two has revealed that they are agents who have helped Chinese nationals enter India posing as Nepalis. 

The IB believes that many more Chinese nationals have entered India undetected posing as Nepalis who are either Nepal or Indian nationals. 

Nepali nationals do not need a visa to enter India, and Indians also do not require a visa to enter Nepal. Very few of the thousands who enter India from Nepal every day are checked and interrogated. 

Free and unhindered cross-border movement of the citizens of the two countries is guaranteed under the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, 1950. 

The IB feels that the recent arrests of the Chinese nationals trying to enter India posing as Nepalis, is part of a plot hatched by Beijing to push spies and subversives into India. 

All the three Chinese nationals arrested since July this year have features that somewhat resemble Nepalis living in the hilly regions. The trio do not look like typical Han Chinese. 

Also, all three were able to converse in Nepali, though with an accent that only someone familiar with the language would be able to detect. 

The recent unearthing of a passport scam in Bengal and Sikkim has confirmed the intelligence agencies’ suspicions. Officers of passport issuing authorities in Sikkim and Bengal, along with middlemen, have been arrested in the scam that involved fraudulently issuing passports to mainly Nepali nationals in exchange for vast sums of money. 

The CBI has conducted raids in 50 locations across Bengal and Sikkim and arrested eight persons so far for their involvement in the scam.

It is feared that some of the passports were issued to Chinese nationals posing as Nepali citizens or even as Nepali residents of India, particularly North Bengal and Sikkim. 

A senior IB officer who spoke to Swarajya said that China has probably recruited Nepali nationals and trained them as spies before facilitating their entry into India. 

China has a strong presence in Nepal and runs institutes and NGOs that disseminate anti-India propaganda. A small section of people in the Himalayan nation, especially those belonging to radical communist fringe groups, harbour anti-India sentiments and would have been easy recruits as Chinese spies. 

Indian intelligence agencies believe that Islamist groups on both sides of the border are also involved in this plot. 

The communists in Nepal, like their counterparts in many parts of the world, have close ties with Islamists. There are a few radical Islamist groups in the Madhes region of Nepal that borders India. 

It is no coincidence that the three Chinese nationals who were arrested were trying to enter India through the Muslim-majority Kishanganj district of Bihar. 

Kishanganj shares borders with Nepal and also Bengal’s North Dinajpur district. A 12 kilometre sliver of land in North Dinajpur district separates an eastern extremity of Kishanganj district from Bangladesh. 

Kishanganj is thus strategically located and is a hub of Islamists, many of them with strong links to Madhes-based Islamists who, in turn, are proxies of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). 

The intimate links between China and Pakistan, especially the military and intelligence agencies of the two countries, facilitates the operation of this scheme to push in Chinese spies and Chinese-trained Nepali spies into India. 

It is suspected that radical Islamist groups on both sides of the India-Nepal border help the Chinese and Chinese-trained Nepali spies and subversives enter India. Once they sneak into India, they are sheltered in Kishanganj before being taken to Bengal, where vigil by the state security apparatus is allegedly slack. 

A senior CBI officer who has knowledge of the ongoing raids and investigation into the passport scam told Swarajya, that quite a few Nepali nationals who were issued Indian passports based on fake documents were apparently poor.

“Their financial status would not have allowed them to pay the hefty bribes (suspected to range from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs two lakh and even more) that were paid to obtain the Indian passports based on fake documents. So someone else would have paid the bribes on their behalf,” the officer said. 

It is suspected that the Chinese agents in Nepal gave out the large sums of money that were paid as bribes to Indian officials and agents. 

The CBI, in conjunction with intelligence agencies, have started a massive exercise to identify the passports (believed to be numbering several hundred) issued based on fraudulent documents. Once identified, the more difficult exercise to trace the persons who were issued those passports will be launched. 

It is imperative, say IB officers, that all those who hold those Indian passports issued on the basis of fake documents be identified and arrested. 

Meanwhile, the SSB has been put on high alert and asked to maintain strict vigil along the India-Nepal border. The SSB has been directed to closely scrutinise all those entering India from Nepal. 

SSB officials with good knowledge of Nepali have been deployed at the border checkposts, especially in Kishanganj and some other border districts, for easier detection of Chinese nationals entering India while posing as Nepalis. 

A senior IB officer based at the agency’s headquarters in New Delhi told Swarajya that the entry of Chinese and China-trained Nepalis as spies and subversives into India has obvious and grave national security implications. 

“All agencies, including the Bengal police, are now working in very close cooperation to take remedial measures that include tracing out and nabbing the spies and subversives who have entered India, and also plug the loopholes that have enabled their entry into India,” he said.