Guan’s statement to Indian agencies reveals that he was a Chinese dissident.

A Chinese national, Guan Liang, who was arrested in Arunachal Pradesh on May 18, 2010, was quietly sent back to China three years later, government documents and interrogation reports with The Hindu reveal.

Mr. Guan’s statement to the Indian law enforcement agencies and comments from his American supporter show that he was not an intelligence operative, as was reported in the Indian media at the time of his arrest, but was an internationally connected Chinese dissident seeking support from India.

In the detailed self-introduction that Mr. Guan submitted at the Tezu police station in eastern Arunachal Pradesh, he said: “I am a Chinese national. I was born in Luohe city in the Henan province. The Chinese police want to kill me as I tried to highlight their human rights violations.”

Mr. Guan said his life changed in 2009 when he wrote a letter to the Shanghai government, demanding a probe into certain historic instances of human rights violation. During interrogation by Indian law enforcement agencies, Mr. Guan narrated a string of human rights violations and extra-judicial killings of activists in China dating back to the 1960s and reported an Internet movement led by Chinese campaigners to investigate these reports of violations.

At the centre of Mr. Guan’s activism was the case of Lin Zhao, an iconic young activist, who was murdered on April 29, 1968. The legend of Lin Zhao is little known outside China, but her youthful rebellion at the height of the rule of Mao Zedong has earned her modern China’s growing respect.

According to the documents with The Hindu, Mr. Guan’s activism was the result of the training he received from an American anthropologist and human rights activist, Lily Hope Chumley, and a host of other Chinese dissidents who operate from Beijing’s art district.

“He was very bright and committed. I used to worry about the intensity of his commitment,” Dr. Chumley, who currently teaches in the Department of Anthropology in New York University, said.

Under pressure from police and intelligence authorities in China, who repeatedly attacked him and his family, Mr. Guan began his escape to India on February 16, 2010. Once in India, he was not allowed the status of a refugee. Instead, he was handed down a 30-month imprisonment in Itanagar.

Sources in the Arunachal judiciary said that Mr. Guan, who came from China seeking safety and protection from the Indian authorities, was reportedly handed back to China.