On April 29, the Additional Directorate General of Public Information of the Indian Army dropped quite a bombshell on Twitter. They claimed to have found footprints of a Yeti, a legendary “abominable snowman” whose alleged sightings have enthralled trekkers and enthusiasts for more than a century.

“Sited mysterious footprints of mythical beast ‘Yeti’ measuring 32×15 inches close to Makalu Base Camp on 09 April 2019,” said the ADG-PI’s tweet. Accompanied with pictures of footprints, the tweet also stated: “this elusive snowman has only been sighted at Makalu-Barun National Park in the past.”

Twitter users pointed out that the footprints in the picture seemed to be only of one foot. Meaning that the Yeti was hopping on a single leg for reasons known to the Yeti universe, or that the team mistook snowmarks caused by another object or animal for Yeti footprints.

Pleading nationalistic propriety, BJP leader Tarun Vijay replied to the tweet requesting the Army to “show respect” to the Yeti and not call it a “beast”.

NDTV quoted unnamed army sources as saying that the tweet is based on “physical proof of on-the-spot narration”. “We got the inputs about 10 days back and yet we held on to it,” the said, adding that “photos and videos may surprise you.”

The sources claim that the tweet was meant to “excite scientific temper and rekindle the interest”. “Some of us who reject the story surely shall have a definite answer to the evidences. As they say, nature, history and science never write their final story,” the source adds.

The earliest Yeti sighting dates back to 1832, detailed in a report by BH Hodgson, the then-British resident in the Court of Nepal. The Yeti features in Nepalese folklore as a furry and tall ape-like creature. Its most-famous pop culture appearance remains “Tintin in Tibet”, a special episode of the well-known French adventure series.

In 2014, the Royal Society of London published a paper that put out a list of identified biological samples belonging to ordinary forest fauna that had been usually attributed to bigfoots and Yetis. It concluded: “While it is important to bear in mind that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and this survey cannot refute the existence of anomalous primates, neither has it found any evidence in support.”