Bodies from an 1968 Plane Crash Discovered

Filed in archive Aviation News on August 22, 2007

40 years after an army plane in the Indian mountains crashed, the body of one of the victims was returned to his family, fully preserved. Two other bodies were discovered but not identified. The plane went down in 1968 and is believed that all 102 passengers were killed.

"The body is intact and not decomposed," said an army commander, who asked not to be named in keeping with army protocol.

The corpses were discovered close to where an army plane crashed in 1968 in the mountains of Himachal Pradesh state, but the army has not yet disclosed the identity of the other two victims.

Only one other body has even been found following the crash, in which all 102 passengers are believed to have been killed.

Phukan's body, wrapped in the Indian flag, was given to his family tuesday morning in Deodhai Gaon Deuri Chuk village in Assam, a state in northeastern India, the commander said.

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