More than 56 years after an ill-fated AN-12 aircraft of the Indian Air Force crashed over the Rohtang Pass in Himachal Pradesh, the mortal remains of four more victims were recovered, marking a significant success in one of India's longest-running search operations. Army officials said the mortal remains were found by a joint team comprising personnel from the Dogra Scouts of the Indian Army and Tiranga Mountain Rescue. The twin-engine turboprop transport aircraft, carrying 102 people, had gone missing on February 7, 1968 while flying from Chandigarh to Leh. "In an extraordinary development, the ongoing search and rescue mission to recover the remains of personnel from the AN-12 aircraft, which crashed on Rohtang Pass in 1968, has achieved significant breakthroughs," said an official. For decades, the wreckage and remains of the victims remained lost in the icy terrain. It was only in 2003 when mountaineers from the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Mountaineering discovered the .
As India was getting ready to scale up its military capabilities after losing to China in the 1962 Sino-India war and facing rising pressures from Pakistan, MiG-21 was acquired by the country in 1963
IAF Group Captain Varun Singh, the lone survivor of the helicopter crash that killed Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat and 12 others, is being shifted to Bengaluru
Searches continued on Tuesday to locate the two pilots missing after the helicopter crash in Ranjit Sagar Dam in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua district
It is suspected that the chopper crashed due to technical reasons
The crash occurred few minutes after the IAF Kiran aircraft took off from Air Force Station, Hakimpet on the city outskirts.