After five years, a French climber who found a treasure chest containing emeralds, sapphires and rubies in the Mont Blanc, is still waiting to know if the treasure will be his. Click here to read our article published on Friday 27 September 2013.
According to Le Dauphine, the story dates back to September 2013 when the climber was scaling the famous Boisson glacier (4800m) in the Mont Blanc Massif.
As he was making his way up, he was left stunned when he stumbled across a metal box that was filled with emeralds, rubies and sapphires. The gems were inside bags stamped with the words "Made in India".
The treasure is believed to be linked to two mysterious plane crashes involving in Indian airliners. On November 3, 1950: the Malabar Princess, an Air India aircraft descending into Geneva, crashed on the Mont-Blanc. All the 48 passengers died. Sixteen years later, on January 24, 1966, a Boeing 707, also belonging to Air India, flying from Mumbai to New York, impacted in the same proximity. 177 passengers died.
The mountain climber handed the treasure in to the local police.
“He is an honest man who quickly realized that this chest belonged to someone else,” said the Commander of the gendarmerie of Albertville. “He could have kept it to himself but he has chosen to hand it over to the police."
The French authorities said they would contact their Indian authorities to try to trace the owner. But since then the Alpinist is still waiting to hear whether the real owner was traced or whether, as the law allows, he will actually be rewarded for his honesty.
Worried over the silence from the local gendarmes the climber decided to go public with a desire to remain anonymous.
"The gendarmes told me that they would give me news over the course of the investigation, but I never had anything at all," he told to Le Dauphine Libéré.
The climber is concerned that when he gave the gems to police he did not receive a copy of his statement or a precise inventory of the 49 sealed sachets that he handed over.
According to the Dauphine Libéré the gems are being stored in a bank vault in Chamonix.
