Air Force personnel on Wednesday arrived in Fatehpur village here with the body of Malkhan Singh, a force member who had gone missing when an aircraft he was on crashed near the Rohtang Pass 56 years ago.

His family and fellow villagers were already primed for the arrival, having received the information from the Air Force earlier, and had made preparations for the Air Force Sepoy's long due cremation.

As the body reached the village, locals in large numbers came out on the streets to pay their tributes and raised slogans: 'Malkhan Singh Amar Rahe,' 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'.

The family is expected to perform his last rites later in the day.

According to Additional SP Sagar Jain, Malkhan Singh's body reached the village around 2.30 pm.

His younger brother, Isam Singh, 68, said Malkhan Singh joined the Air Force when he was 20. He died in the crash three years later, leaving behind his wife Sheela Devi and son Ram Prasad, who was 18 months old.

Sheela, who had married Malkhan's other younger brother Chandrapal after his death, is dead, so is his son, Isam said.

Malkhan would have been 79 now if he were alive, he said with tears in his eyes.

"He always wanted to join the Air Force. Seeing planes flying above the field, he used to say that he would join the force, which he ultimately did," he said.

"The whole extended family which grew up on Malkhan's legend will now get a chance to see him finally," said Isam, one of the only two of Malkhan's siblings alive.

Malkhan Singh's descendents are his grandsons Gautam and Manish, and granddaughters Sonia, Seema, and Monica.

While Gautam and Manish drive an auto in Saharanpur, Sonia and Seema are married. Monika, 19, is still studying. Of all his siblings, only Isam and sister Chandrapali are alive.

Sultan Singh and Chandrapal, Malkhan's other younger brothers, died over the years.

ASP Jain said that Malkhan Singh was identified through a batch found near the body.

"The Army informed us that the body was not completely damaged as it was in the snow. His family members can identify him," the officer said.

Malkhan Singh had gone missing in a 1968 aircraft crash in the snow-clad mountains of Himachal Pradesh's Rohtang. He was on an AN-12 aircraft of the Indian Air Force.

Malkhan Singh, along with four more plane passengers, was found by a joint team of Dogra Scouts of the Indian Army and Tiranga Mountain Rescue.

The twin-engine turboprop transport aircraft, carrying 102 people, had gone missing on February 7, 1968, while flying from Chandigarh to Leh.

"In an extraordinary development, the ongoing search and rescue mission to recover the remains of personnel from the AN-12 aircraft, which crashed on Rohtang Pass in 1968, has achieved significant breakthroughs," an officer had earlier said.

For decades, the wreckage and remains of the victims remained lost in the icy terrain. It was only in 2003 when mountaineers from the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Mountaineering discovered the wreckage, sparking multiple expeditions over the years by the Indian Army, especially the Dogra Scouts.

Only five bodies of the victims were recovered by 2019 given the treacherous conditions and unforgiving terrain.

"Malkhan Singh was martyred 56 years ago when an Air Force plane crashed near Siachen Glacier. Malkhan Singh's body was recovered by the rescue operation a few days ago and the body was not damaged due to being buried in snow," Jain said.

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