Teams from the air force and army are moving towards a glacier near Lahaul Valley in Himachal Pradesh to search for the remains of 100 military personnel who died in an air crash 35 years ago.
The air force team, led by Wing Commander Amit Chaudhary, is looking to establish helipads to make landings with personnel and equipment to begin the search.
An IAF spokesperson told rediff.com that the team has established its first camps at around 13,000ft, around 3,500ft below the crash site. "They are looking at locations for helicopters to land," he said.
An army team, comprising two officers, two junior commissioned officers and 25 others from the Dogra Scouts, is acclimatising at the base camp.
"They are on their way to the glacier," an army spokesperson said.
Helicopters from the Sarsawa air base are expected to join the search operations, while the army has already airlifted snow-clearing equipment from Kanpur.
Sources in both the forces said Monday's bad weather severely hampered the progress of the search. "There have been heavy downpour and snowy wind in the upper reaches," an officer said.
The search began after a team from the Himalayan Mountaineering and Allied Sports Institute recovered the remains of a sepoy, Beli Ram, in the South Dakka glacier last month.
On February 7, 1968, an IAF AN-12 transport aircraft got caught in bad weather and crashed near Rohtang Pass. The aircraft, with 90 army soldiers and 10 IAF crew, was on its way to Leh.
According to the mountaineers who recovered Beli Ram's remains, the wreckage is believed to be somewhere between Rohtang Pass and Batal.
In 1968, the IAF and army had tried several times to trace the bodies. But due to lack of sophisticated navigational equipment and bad weather they had to abandon the search. "Even repeated helicopter surveys couldn't trace anything," an IAF officer said.
The find has generated hope among the relatives of those killed. Beli Ram, a member of the Pioneer Regiment, was a resident of Akhnoor in Jammu and Kashmir.
Flight Lieutenant H K Singh was the pilot of the An-12 while Flt Lt M S Bains was the navigator. Most of those killed were young. In fact, Flt Lt Bains was married for just 14 months and his son was only three months old when the plane went down into the snows.
