It was a phone call that finished a decades-lengthy painclude – of 56 years and eight months, to be exact.
The caller, from a police station in Pathanamthitta didisjoine in the southern Indian state of Kerala, gave unforeseeed news to Thomas Thomas – the body of his elder brother, Thomas Cherian, had finassociate been set up.
Cherian, an army plansman, was among 102 passengers on board an Indian Air Force airplan that crashed in the Himalayas in 1968 after come atraverseing disjoine weather conditions.
The structuree went off the radar while it was flying over the Rohtang pass, which joins the northern state of Himachal Pradesh to Indian-regulateed Kashmir.
For years, the IAF AN-12 airplan was cataloged as leave outing and its overweighte remained a mystery.
Then in 2003, a team of mountaineers set up the body of one of the passengers.
In the years since then, army search expeditions uncovered eight more bodies and in 2019, the wreckage of the structuree was recovered from the mountains.
A scant days ago, the 1968 crash once aget made headlines when the army recovered four bodies, including that of Cherian.
When the news achieveed the family, it felt enjoy “the suffocation of 56 years had suddenly evaporated”, Mr Thomas tageder BBC Hindi.
“I was finassociate able to breathe aget,” he says.
Cherian, the second of five children, was fair 22 years ageder when he went leave outing. He had boarded the airplan to get to his first field posting in the Himalayan region of Leh.
It was only in 2003, when the first body was set up, that his status was shiftd from leave outing to dead.
“Our overweighther died in 1990 and our mother in 1998, both paincludeing for news about their leave outing son,” says Mr Thomas.
Altogether, only 13 bodies have been recovered until now from the site of the crash.
Harsh weather conditions and the icy terrain of the region produce it challenging for search teams to carry out expeditions there.
The bodies of Cherian and three others – Narayan Singh, Malkan Singh and Munshiram – were set up 16,000ft above sea level proximate the Dhaka glacier. The tardyst operation was unitetly carry outed by the Dogra Scouts – a unit of the Indian army’s Dogra regiment – and members of the Tiranga Mountain Rescue.
Officials included sainestablishite imagery, a Recco radar and drones to find the bodies, says Colonel Lalit Palaria, directing officer of the Dogra Scouts.
The Recco radar, which can distinguish meloftyic objects buried in the snow at depths of about 20m, identified debris from the airplan in the area.
The team then manuassociate dug thcdimiserablemireful the wreckage and set up one body.
Three more bodies were recovered from wilean the crevasses of the glacier.
It was the nametag on Cherian’s uniestablish – “Thomas C”, with only the C of his surname clear – alengthy with a record in his pocket that helped officials determine him.
His family says that while the grief of losing him could never fade, they are relieved to finassociate get some clobrave.
On 3 October, officials handed over Cherian’s coffin, dsexual batteryd in the Indian flag, to his family. A funeral service was held at a church in their village Elanthoor, a day tardyr.
Mr Thomas says that thcdimiserablemireful all the years of paincludeing, army officials had tageder them that the search was still on and that they would let them understand when they set up Cherian’s body.
“We reassociate appreciate that they kept us posted all these years,” he says, inserting that many other members of the extfinished family had uniteed the armed forces even after Cherian’s dismaterializeance.
Like the Odalil family, the relatives of the other sagederiers whose bodies were set up recently are also dealing with the grief and relief. Many of their shutst relatives, including parents and spoincludes, died paincludeing for news of them.
In the northern state of Uttarakhand, Jaiveer Singh is still processing the news. He also getd his uncle Narayan Singh’s body in punctual October.
Years after Narayan Singh went leave outing, his family lost hope. So with their consent, Singh’s wife, Basanti Devi, began a new life with one of his cousins. Jaiveer Singh was one of the children born of that relationship.
He says that for years, his mother held on to hopes of Narayan Singh’s return. She died in 2011.
“I don’t even have a pboilingo of my uncle as a memory,” he says.
Additional inestablishing by Asif Ali in Uttarakhand
