Secret files: Mystery surrounding Netaji’s death deepens

Subhrangshu Gupta

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Following the declassification of 64 secret Netaji files by the West Bengal government, controversy has erupted yet again over the death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. These files were locked up at the intelligence branch office of the Kolkata police for over past seven decades. 

The files recorded the reports on the Netaji’s secret activities during the pre-independence period which were prepared by the police. Over a dozen officers were engaged for spying on the Netaji and some of his family members during that period.

Several documents relating to his death in a plane crash on August 18, 1945, at Taihoku airport were also there in the files, which Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee noticed.

However, she claimed these references suggested that the Netaji was not killed in the 1945 crash. She demanded that the Modi government should now declassify the remaining records kept in the New Delhi’s North Block to solve the mystery of his death.

But Prof Krishna Bose, the Netaji’s grand daughter- in-law and director of the Netaji Research Bureau, also a former TMC MP, still believed that the Netaji was killed in that crash. She herself did not find any record or reference during her research that contradict the reports of his death.

On the contrary, she found some concrete evidences and the records in the reports of the Shah Nawaz Committee, 1958, and the Khosla Inquiry Commission, 1970, which established the fact that the Netaji was killed in August 18, 1945 plane crash. Moreover, Anita, the Netaji’s daughter, met and talked to some of the survivors of the crash who told her that her father was killed in the crash. 

Netaji’s wife Emily, also in a letter to Sarat Chandra Bose, admitted that the Netaji was killed in the 1945 plane crash and the letter is still preserved at the Netaji Research Bureau, Krishna Bose said.

Prof Saugata Bose, a research scholar on the Netaji, in his book established the fact that the Netaji was killed in the Taihoku plane accident in 1945. But another scholar, Dr Purabi Roy, contradicted the report and she claimed that the Netaji was in Russia even after 1945 when he was seeking Russia’s help for India’s freedom.

The Forward Bloc, which he founded after severing his ties with the Congress, still demanded that the Centre should now resolve all issues over the Netaji’s death through the substantial documents and evidences and ascertain the date of the Netaji’s death and the date be declared as a national holiday.