Dalai Lama’s last escort in escape from Tibet dies

Author: AFP

DHARAMSALA: The last surviving member of a small troop of Indian soldiers who escorted the Dalai Lama as he fled Tibet in 1959 has died aged 85, his former regiment said on Friday.

The Tibetan spiritual leader arrived in India as a young monk after a 13-day trek through the Himalayas disguised as a soldier to evade detection by Chinese troops.

Naren Chandra Das, who died at his residence in Assam on Monday, was 22 at the time and had just completed his training with the Assam Rifles, the Indian army’s oldest paramilitary force. Along with six other soldiers, he escorted the monk to Lumla, in India’s north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, on March 31, 1959.

In an interview with local media last year, Das described how the soldiers had walked through the mountainous region while the Dalai Lama was on a horse.

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