The Hindu : Bad weather hampers 'Operation Salvage'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Aug 12, 2003

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National

Bad weather hampers 'Operation Salvage'

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI AUG. 11. Bad weather is hampering a joint Army-Air Force operation to establish a foothold in the upper reaches of Himachal Pradesh where a military aircraft carrying 98 servicemen went down 35 years ago.

The 50-member "Operation Salvage" team, comprising air force officials and some of the best trekkers from the Army's 36 Sector force, was now stranded near Manali at Batal, the last point accessible from the road.

It was waiting for the weather to clear before striking more camps along the route to the crash site in the frozen wilderness of the Dhaka Glacier in the upper Rohtang Valley, officials said here.

The team was studying the area before undertaking a full-fledged search mission.

At the moment, heavy rain and frequent landslips are making it difficult for the expedition to make much headway.

The search was bound to be challenging and long drawn, said official sources.

Not only was the weather a major deterrent, the wreckage of the plane was assumed to be scattered along the slopes of a near-perpendicular wall of ice. The armed forces had given up the search after the rudimentary equipment available at that time failed to locate the exact site.

The first indication of the general area of the crash came in 2001 when an Italian trekking expedition returned with several badges of the Garhwal Rifles, the core of an Army company proceeding to a high altitude posting in an An-12 aircraft of the Indian Air Force. A search mission was set up after an Indian trekking team last month came across solid evidence of the crash in the form of frozen remains of a sepoy whose paybook identified him as Beli Ram.

A fresh court of inquiry into the cause of the crash had been set up and officials from the Air Force headquarters here had joined the expedition, an Air Force spokesperson said here.

The trek begins at 16,000 feet, double the height of an average hill resort, and would end at 20,000 feet in forbidding terrain.

The team would have to build a couple of helipads along the way to set up an uninterrupted supply line for its men and to bring back whatever evidence of the dead servicemen and the aircraft is discovered.

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