Mountaineers find soldier’s remains on Himachal glacier
SHIMLA : Mountaineers on a cleanup drive in Himachal Pradesh’s Lahaul and Spiti district stumbled upon the remains of a soldier along with some wreckage of an Indian Air Force plane that had disappeared with 102 army personnel on board 50 years ago, an official said on Saturday.
The Russian-manufactured Antonov (AN)-12 aircraft was carrying troops and supplies from Chandigarh to Leh when it had gone missing in the icy terrain on February 7,1968.
Belonging to Chandigarhbased 25 squadron, the plane was commanded by Flight Lieutenant HK Singh, who lost contact with the air traffic control amid bad weather while flying over the Rohtang pass. The missing plane has remained one of the biggest mysteries in the Indian military aviation history. Remains of only four soldiers had been recovered so far, the last during an expedition in 2007.
Now, a team of 11 climbers who were on a Swachh Bharat Pakhwada drive discovered the body of a soldier along with the wreckage on the 6,200-metrehigh Chandrabhaga peak on the Dhaka glacier overlooking the Lahaul valley.
“Our team members spotted a hand protruding from the ice. On approaching it, we found a corpse that was intact. I could also figure some burn marks on the body,” said Rajeev Rawat, who was leading the cleanup drive launched jointly by the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation of India (ONGC) and Indian Mountaineering Federation.
The body was in army fatigues and had an identification nameplate lying close to it. Following this, the team alerted the army on July 16. “I contacted an army official at the mountaineering institute, who further informed the army’s high altitude warfare school,” said Rawat, who is an instructor at the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering in Uttarkashi.
The army and air force are reported to have launched a joint operation to recce the area.
However, the civil administration in Lahaul-Spiti had no information about the development. “We are learning about it from the media. We will inform the army,” said officiating deputy commissioner Amar Singh Negi.
In 2003, an expedition team from the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Mountaineering and Allied Sports was the first to spot the wreckage scattered all over the Dhaka glacier
Mountaineers also found the body and identity card of a soldier, identified as Beliram of Akhnoor in Jammu and Kashmir. He was cremated with military honours.