Almost 60 years after becoming collateral damage in one of the fiercest battles between Indian Army soldiers and Chinese invaders, a village in Arunachal Pradesh is fighting a war to protect a sacred forest from a project for preventing a repeat of 1962.
But the 217 families of Nyukmadong, an off-the-highway village in West Kameng district, seem to be losing the fight against the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), a wing of the very Army their ancestors had aided during the Chinese Aggression six decades ago.
Perched 8,389 ft above the mean sea level, Nyukmadong is about 40 km short of Sela, a strategic pass at 13,700 ft on the way to Tawang. The place is known for a Buddhist-style war memorial on a 1.5-acre plot overlooking the site of a battle on November 18, 1962.
