REUTERS

Thousands of people fleeing the junta's crackdown in Myanmar have crossed into India's far-flung eastern states, leading to worries among officials there that the region could become a staging post for pro-democracy activists and stoke instability.

Three Indian states - Mizoram, Manipur and Nagaland - are currently sheltering around 16,000 people from Myanmar, civil society groups and government officials estimate, with the number expected to rise in coming months.

In Mizoram, where the most number of people from Myanmar have sought sanctuary, authorities are keeping a close watch on pro-democracy fighters joining refugees moving across the unfenced, densely forested border marked by the Tiau river.

"We are monitoring this very closely," a state government adviser told Reuters. He said that some Myanmar fighters had earlier crossed over with the support of local people in India but had since returned.

"We will never allow them to train in Mizoram," the adviser said. "If you disturb Mizoram, there will be a problem for the refugees."

In early May, a group of at least 50 people from Myanmar held a training camp in Mizoram, a state police official and a resistance member told Reuters.

The camp in Mizoram's Champhai district did not involve the use of weapons and was disbanded after Indian paramilitary troops made enquiries, the resistance member said, declining to be named.

"All the young people have moved back to Myanmar," the resistance member said.

At least 850 people have been killed in the turmoil in Myanmar since the junta staged a coup in February, unseating the civilian government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Some of the heaviest fighting has taken place in Chin state, which borders India, in clashes between the military and local militias.

An ousted lawmaker from Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) told Reuters some resistance fighters from Chin state had procured weapons from India and from the Arakan Army, an ethnic militia in Myanmar's Rakhine region, fuelling a clandestine arms trade in the region.

"Naturally, these people want to fight the junta. What they will try to do, in my opinion, is to procure some arms from this side (India)," said the Mizoram police official with knowledge of the training camp.