  We consider the three lepton decay modes of the proton within the proton
decay interpretation of the atmospheric neutrino anomaly. We construct higher
dimensional operators in the framework of the standard model. The operators
which allow the particularly interesting decay mode are of dimension 10
involving $SU(2)_L$ non-singlet higgs. We show how these operators can be
comparable to the dimension 9 operators. We then present a simple left-right
symmetric model which can give rise to the desired proton decay modes of the
right order of magnitude.
