Olympic Torch Participants Braced For Strongest Protest Yet As Relay Arrives In India

April 17, 2008 7:24 a.m. EST

New Delhi (AHN) -- The Olympic Torch braces for its most sensitive stretch on Thursday as the relay prepares to make its way through India, the home of the Dalai Lama and some 100,000 Tibetan refugees.

The torch arrived in India late Wednesday under strong security. Some 15,000 policemen and commandos have locked down the heart of New Delhi.

City officials have refused to specify the exact time the relay will begin. Government offices are scheduled to close during the run. The run already has been shortened from nine kilometers to three kilometers for security purposes.

On Wednesday, police manned yellow barricades leading to the India Gate, the monument to slain Indian soldiers and the scheduled end of the torch run.

Bollywood actors Aamir Khan and Saif Ali Khan, tennis player Leander Paes and officials from China's embassy in New Delhi are scheduled to run the relay.

The Olympic flame arrived from Pakistan where it was handed over to head of the Indian Olympic Association.

While flag-waving Indian dancers and Chinese cheerleaders greeted the flame's arrival at the New Delhi airport, the scene changed when some two dozen Tibetan exiles protested along a busy highway as the torch made the journey into town. The exiles chanted anti-China slogans and were forcibly detained by police and taken away in police vans.

Thousands of police have been deployed across New Delhi. The Tibetan exile community have staged almost daily protest since demonstrations first broke out in Tibet in March.

In recent weeks, they have stormed the Chinese Embassy, which is surrounded by barricades and barbed wire. As part of the protests, they have gone on hunger strikes and shaved their heads.

Protests were expected to continue all day before the 4 p.m. (6:30 a.m. (EDT) start of the relay.

There have even been some rumors of the exiles plotting to steal or douse the Olympic flame.