London: Indian newspaper copies with headlines such as ‘India’s First Woman Prime Minister’, referring to Indira Gandhi’s election win in 1966, have been recovered recently. They have been found from the melting French glacier of ‘Bossons’ on the Mont Blanc mountain range. The Mont Blanc mountain range in Western Europe was the site of an Air India plane crash 54 years ago. The Air India crash in Europe’s highest mountain range took place January 24, 1966.
Discovery of Indian historical evidence
The Indian historical evidences were discovered by Timothée Mottin, who runs the cafe-restaurant La Cabane du Cerro. The café-restaurant is situated at an altitude of 1,350 metres above the French resort of Chamonix.
“They are drying now but they are in very good condition. You can read them,” Mottin, 33, told the local French daily ‘Le Daupine Libere’, The report has been quoted by ‘The Guardian’ newspaper and other agencies in the United Kingdom (UK).
“It’s not unusual. Every time we walk on the glacier with friends, we find remains of the crash. With experience, you know where they are. They are being carried along by the glacier according to their size,” Mottin added.
The Air India Boeing 707 had crashed into the range after a verbal flight control miscommunication. The crash led to the loss of all 177 passengers and crew.
Various newspapers found
Copies of the ‘National Herald’ and ‘Economic Times’ are among a dozen newspapers discovered by Mottin. His cafe is about 45 minutes by foot from the Bossons glacier. It is there the plane named after the Himalayan peak of Kangchenjunga mysteriously crashed.
Mottin said he was lucky to discover the papers when he did. The ice in which they had been encased for nearly six decades had probably only just melted. Once the papers have dried out, they will join a growing collection of items from the crash that Mottin has put on display at his café.
Other finds from crash site
Since 2012, there have been a number of finds relating to the 1966 Air India crash emerging from the melting ice caps. In 2012, a bag of diplomatic mail stamped ‘On Indian Government Service, Diplomatic Mail, Ministry of External Affairs’, was recovered. A year later a French climber found a metal box with the Air India logo. It contained emeralds, sapphires and rubies worth between GBP 117,000 and GBP 230,000.
Human remains found in the area in 2017 are also believed to come from the 1966 crash. Those however, could be related to that of another Indian plane, the ‘Malabar Princess’. It came down in the area in 1950.