In what comes as a surprising development, several Indian newspaper copies from 1966 were recently recovered from a melting French glacier of Bossons on the Mont Blanc mountain range in Western Europe. The newspapers carry headlines such as "India's First Woman Prime Minister", referring to Indira Gandhi's election win in 1966, in the most unlikely of all places - inside a melting glacier in Europe.
So how on Earth did this come to be? How did the newspapers find their way halfway across the world, 53 years after they were issued in India?
According to news agencies, the newspapers belong to the residue of an Air India plane that crashed into Europe's highest mountain on January 24, 1966, and were discovered by Timothee Mottin, who runs the cafe-restaurant La Cabane du Cerro at an altitude of 1,350 meters above the French resort of Chamonix.
"They are drying now but they are in very good condition. You can read them," Mottin, 33, told the local French daily 'Le Daupine Libere', as quoted by The Guardian newspaper and other agencies in the UK.
Among the dozen or so newspapers recovered from the glacier are National Herald and Economic Times.
"It's not unusual. Every time we walk on the glacier with friends, we find remains of the crash. With experience, you know where they are. They are being carried along by the glacier according to their size," Mottin said.
The Air India Boeing 707, named after the Himalayan peak of Kanchenjungha, had mysteriously crashed into the Bossons glacier in France 53 years ago. Mottin's cafe is approximately 45 minutes by foot from the melting glacier in the mountain range.
Since 2012, there have been a number of finds relating to the 1966 Air India crash emerging from the melting ice caps.
Human remains found in the area in 2017 are also believed to come from the 1966 crash or that of another Indian plane, the Malabar Princess, that came down in the area in 1950, agencies have reported.
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