After 56 years, the body of this army officer who died in a plane crash was found, the body was hidden in this mountain of snow!

AN 12 Transport plane Crash Thomas Cherian Latest News: There was a plane crash in 1968. This accident happened in Rohtang, Himachal Pradesh. More than 101 passengers died in this. Now after 56 years, the body of the army craftsman who was on board the plane has been recovered.

AN 12 Transport plane Crash Thomas Cherian: A plane crash occurred in 1968. This accident took place at Rohtang in Himachal Pradesh. More than 101 passengers died in this. Now after 56 years, the body of the Army craftsman who was on board the plane has been recovered. Actually, this body was covered with snow in the mountains. A total of four bodies have been found, in which one body is of a craftsman. The deceased has been identified as Thomas Cherian. He was in the Army as a Craftsman. Cherian was among the 101 people on board the Indian Air Force's AN 12 Transport plane, which crashed in the mountains near Rohtang on February 7, 1968. His body is one of the four bodies recovered by the team.

Thomas Cherian was from Kerala

Thomas Cherian was a resident of Kerala. He was 22 years old when the accident happened. The bodies were recovered by mountaineering teams led by the Army's Dogra Scouts from the Dhaka Glacier area at an altitude of about 16,000 feet. Thomas was a resident of Pathanamthitta district of Kerala.

Cherian's father's name was Odalil Thomas and mother's name was Eliamma. They had five children, of whom Cherian was the second son. Cherian joined the army as a Craftsman after completing the pre-university course in Pathanamthitta.

His younger brother Thomas said - It was a long wait for the family. Yesterday we received a communication from the army headquarters in Delhi about the recovery of Cherian's body. Cherian's uniform pocket had a partially burnt book bearing his name besides his chest number, which helped in identifying it. We were told that the body will be sent back to Kerala in a few days after completing the formalities.

Cherian was posted in Leh

In 1968, Cherian was posted in Leh and the accident happened while he was going there from Chandigarh. Thomas' father had retired from BHEL. He died in 1990, while Cherian's mother died in 1998. Cherian's family said - Every year on February 7, the family remembers Cherian, but we do not celebrate his death anniversary.

In 2003 it was reported that Cherian had died

The family has been waiting for Cherian's body ever since it was officially informed in 2003 that he had died. Every four or five years, the army would inform the family that the search was on.

The whole family is in the defense force

Several members of the Odalil family are in the defence forces. Cherian's elder brother Thomas Mathew was already in the army at the time of the plane crash. Two years after Cherian's death, Mathew had to take voluntary retirement under pressure from his parents. His son Sanju is a colonel in the army.