Rajnath Singh Hands over World War-Era US Army Uniform, Plane Parts Found in Assam to Austin

Union minister of defence Rajnath Singh symbolically handed over some items recovered in Assam to his American counterpart Lloyd Austin.

There are remains of approximately 400 US air force personnel who went missing in India during World War II. During World War II, the US helped the Chinese Army and provided them supplies by flying over the Himalayas. Several US army aircraft crashed and were never found in the rugged mountainous terrain of northeast India.

The items handed over included parts of parachute, uniform and airplane of the US forces from the World War II-era as part of the US Defence Prisoner of War/Missing in Action (DPAA POW/MIA) Accounting Agency Mission.

Lloyd Austin and US secretary of state Antony Blinken held the 2+2 India-US ministerial dialogues with Union external affairs minister S Jaishankar and Rajnath Singh in New Delhi on Friday.

The US defence secretary thanked the government for assisting in the efforts to locate the lost soldiers in a post on social media site X. “We have a sacred duty to ensure that all US troops are accounted for—no matter how long it takes. I am grateful to our Indian partners who have assisted the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) in personnel recovery and accounting since 1978. Thanks for supporting this vital mission & returning another hero home,” Austin said.

According to a 2021 press release, the Gandhinagar-based National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU) has tied up with US’s Department of Defense (DOD) to recover and identify the remains of these missing air force personnel.

The DPAA is part of the Department of Defense of the US and was formed in 2015. Its primary task is to trace the remains of US army personnel who went MIA or were taken as prisoners of war during World War II, Korean War, Cold War, Vietnam War and the Iraq Offensive.

The agency is in constant touch with the families of the missing personnel and is currently working to trace more than 81,800 missing personnel.

Earlier under this programme, investigations to find the remains of US airmen were carried out in Tripura in 2013 and Assam and Nagaland in 2014. In 2016, a DPAA team along with a Anthropological Survey of India (ASI) team found some evidence of remains of US Army personnel.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed in 2021 between the NFSU and the DPAA under which students of NFSU travelled to northeastern states with DPAA on several occasions to find the remains of the lost soldiers.

The DPAA said remains of six personnel of the US military have been identified in India. It says 306 US military/airmen have died in the country.

(with inputs from Indian Express)