The body parts found over a month back on Mont Blanc in the French Alps and believed to be belonging to the passengers of an Air India plane which crashed here in 1966 or a previous AI crash at the same place in 1950 could remain unidentified.

France has told AI that the human remains are so old that conducting a forensic exam may not be possible. The country will hold a memorial service next month in wake of the July-end findings of the decades'-old crashes.

"The French justice department has told (us) that forensic examination of the human remains found recently on Mont Blanc (believed to be from an AI crash in 1966) may not be possible as they are very old. The Mayor of Saint-Gervais will organise a remembrance/meditating ceremony in presence of embassy of India and AI officials at the memorial dedicated to victims of the crash. AI has been requested to attend this ceremony," AI spokesman G P Rao said.

The airline will attend this sombre memorial as it had swung into action as soon as it had got news of the human remains being found on Mont Blanc. While in the past also, some aircraft parts have been found, this was possibly the first significant finding of human remains — a hand and the upper part of a leg.

Five years back, a bag of diplomatic mail that was on board AI's Boeing 707 which crashed in 1966 was found. The jute bag stamped "diplomatic mail" and "ministry of external affairs" with some Indian newspapers, was found in August 2012. A year later, a French Alpinist found a metal box containing the AI logo and precious stones at the site.

Two planes of AI have crashed at this site with over 150 people killed in total. On January 24, 1966, an AI Boeing 707 from Bombay to New York crashed near Mont Blanc's summit, killing all 117 people on board.

The father of India's nuclear programme, Homi Bhabha, was on board this ill-fated aircraft. Bhabha was flying to Vienna for a conference.

Before this, in November 1950 another AI flight, a Lockheed Constellation named "Malabar Princess" had crashed on Mont Blanc, killing 48 people.

The climber who found the human remains in July felt they could be of a female passenger from the 1966 flight, as he had also discovered one of the plane's four jet engines. AI was trying to get details of the latest findings.

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