INDIAN newspaper copies with headlines such as “India’s First Woman Prime Minister,” referring to Indira Gandhi’s election win in 1966, have been recovered from the melting French glacier of Bossons on the Mont Blanc mountain range in western Europe, 54 years after an Air India plane crashed there.

The newspapers belong to the residue of an Air India plane that crashed into Europe’s highest mountain on Jan. 24, 1966, and were discovered by Timothée Mottin, who runs the cafe-restaurant La Cabane du Cerro at an altitude of 1,350 meters above the French resort of Chamonix.

Restaurant owner in France finds Indian newspapers from 1966 — from the Air India plane crash near Mont Blanc —which had remained frozen for 54 years.

“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, quoted by The Guardian newspaper and other agencies in the U.K.

“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,” he said.

The Air India Boeing 707 had crashed into the range after a verbal flight control miscommunication, leading to the loss of all 177 passengers and crew.

Copies of the National Herald and Economic Times are among a dozen newspapers discovered by Mottin, whose cafe is about 45 minutes by foot from the Bossons glacier, where the plane named after the Himalayan peak of Kangchenjunga mysteriously crashed over 54 years ago.

Mottin said he was lucky to discover the papers when he did because the ice in which they had been encased for nearly six decades had probably only just melted. Once the papers have dried out, they will join a growing collection of items from the crash that Mottin has put on display at his cafe to share it with visitors.

(SD-Agencies)