Remains of 40-yr-old Aircrash Victims Recovered

New Delhi, Aug 10 (UNI) Finally, they shall receive their last rites as per tradition -- killed in an AN-12 aircrash almost four decades ago, the mortal remains of three soldiers have been recovered from the remote Lahaul valley in Himachal Pradesh and moved to Chandigarh by helicopters today.

Codenamed 'Operation Punaruthan - III' -- the expedition of the Indian Army into the 1968 crash retrieved the bodies yesterday from a glaciated area at an altitude of over 17,500 feet near the Chandrabhaga peak in Lahaul Valley in Lahaul and Spiti district.

The expedition, led by Major Nishant Kumar of the Dogra Scouts, stumbled upon the remains on August 2 after a detailed search of the area for about five days.

Efforts were being made to confirm the identities of the deceased soldiers from the documents and identity cards recovered along with the bodies. Thereafter, the next of kin of the deceased soldiers will be intimated.

The ill-fated AN-12 aircraft of the Indian Air Force had taken off from Chandigarh on February 7, 1968 on a routine logistics sortie with 102 persons on board for Leh.

The aircraft was not able to negotiate the bad weather enroute and crashed against the towering 6,264-meter-high Chandrabhaga peak.

There were no survivors of the crash and a search of the area could not even find the aircraft debris.

It was only in July 2003 that an expedition from the Manali Institute of Mountaineering and Allied Sports discovered the wreckage. The team also found the mortal remains and documents of one victim - Pioneer Beli Ram -- whose remains were moved to his native village in Akhnoor and later cremated with full military honours.

Subsequently, the Army has launched expeditions every summer to recover the bodies of the lost soldiers. However, these operations had not yielded any positive results during the past three attempts.

UNI