Gopinath (L) and JohnA recovery of body parts suspected to belong to the victims of a 50-year-old Air India aircraft crash in the Alps has reopened old wounds in a couple of families in Kottayam.
K G John aka Thankachan from Karukachal was among the 117 passengers on board the ill-fated Boeing 707 flight which crashed on the Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps, on January 24, 1966. Homi J Bhabha, the father of India’s nuclear program, was among the passengers from Mumbai to various European destinations.
The New York-bound aircraft, named Kanchenjunga, was about to land in Geneva in Switzerland when it crashed on the snow-covered mountain. Bhabha was on his way to Vienna.
Last week, an aviation enthusiast found a hand and the upper part of a leg during one of his expeditions to the crash site. He said that he believed the remains to be from the 1966 crash because he also recovered one of the four engines.
Another Air India aircraft crashed in the Alps in 1950.
John, a seaman with the Madras-based South India Shipping Corporation, was accompanied by 45 of his colleagues who were on their way to Bremen in the then West Germany to take delivery of a ship. K G Gopinath, another seaman from Kudamaloor, was initially declared to be dead but he had never boarded the flight.
Gopinath’s family received a telegram from an Air India office soon after the crash. He was supposed to be among the 11 seamen from Kerala who lost their lives in the crash. All newspapers carried his name among the victims.
Gopinath’s mother was taken ill. A crowd of mourners gathered in his house.
However, another telegram from Air India followed a day after, apologizing for the false information. The merchant navy officer could not fly as intended for some technical reason. He reached home a week later.
Gopinath carried on as a seaman and got married later. He died of a cardiac arrest in 1997. His wife Chembakavalli and son Gopakumar live at Varisseri.
John’s family is still waiting for confirmation of the officer’s death. His employer had told the relatives that he was dead, said his brother K G George, a decorated officer with the Indian Army.
John was one of the seven children of K M George and Shoshamma George.
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