India's Biggest Cover-up; by Anuj Dhar.

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India's Biggest Cover-up

Anuj Dhar.

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"With India becoming free in August 1947, the Bose mystery was put on the back-burner in the face of urgent and far bigger challenges. Migration of Habibur Rahman to Pakistan dealt a blow to all those who were hoping to extract more out of a man they thought was bound by oath to tell only as much Bose had told him to.

"Before he was assassinated in 1948, Gandhi—a senior journalist told me—rebuked Nehru and Patel for not being able to reign in the partition madness and wished that his “other son [Subhas] was here!” Reminded by a Congressman, who had witnesses the dressing down, that Bose was dead and he had himself come to hold that belief, Gandhi shot back: “He’s in Russia”.

"Forget what he announced after meeting Rahman, in his private conversations Gandhi continued to be confident that Bose was alive. For decades his unpublicised remarks—such as “Rahman gave me a soldier’s statement”—remained unsubstantiated. That held good till the early 1990s when Seeley G Mudd Manuscript Library at the Princeton University revealed a proof. Personal papers of pro-India American journalist and Gandhi’s biographer Louis Fischer yielded a letter, written subsequent to his meeting Gandhi on 20 July 1946. On behalf of Gandhi, his secretary and granddaughter of Dadabhai Naoroji, Khurshed Naoroji, warned Fischer on July 22 that “if Bose comes with the help of Russia neither Gandhiji nor the Congress will be able to reason with the country”. [80]"

It was this level of deliberate a lie told India by Congress governments for decades!

And for what? Just so they do not have to relinquish power to someone honest, uncompromising and revered by India he loved, they'd rather let him remain incarcerated in Siberia and even die without a noise!

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Not according to Wikipedia which mentions no such specifics, although wiki dies mention such a close relationship for Sheila Kaul; but it's not conclusively absence of relationship for TN Kaul, for whom Wikipedia mentions a horrific diatribe against him at length from Moynihan, against his appointment as ambassador to US, calling him various unpleasant names because he was a Kashmir Brahman, which all amounts rather to expose Moynihan in particular and US in general as their having expected slavelike servility from India.

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One has to wonder if government knew that Netaji was already in, or about to arrive into, India, was now a Sadhu, and hence put up a false one, so people get confused.

" ... By 1960, Shaulmari sadhu had become the talk of the nation. He smoked expensive cigarettes and conversed in Bangla and English. Getting an access to him was tough as the ashram administration insisted on tardy bureaucratic procedures. Rumours spread thick and fast that Saradanand was actually Subhas Bose in disguise."

Author writes about several former associates of Netaji asserting the two being same.

Which brings one to think, perhaps another author on subject of Netaji who opined yesterday a body double of Netaji could impersonate him as a Sadhu, might be correct in this Coochbehar case, although not in the Ayodhya case which he was referring to.

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Author exposes his very westernised educational roots in the mistake here.

" ... It is a curious paradox to have your first name “Bhola”—Hindi for naïve—when you are the big daddy of spies."

He's talking of Bholanath Mullick; as per inexplicable fashion north of Vindhya, perhaps following British routine with Hindu names,, often a first name is split and so written in two parts - here, Bhola Nath - but, nevertheless (as every Indian knows in this and in most other cases), the first name isn't Bhola, it's Bholanath. And while the part Bhola is relevant, Bholanath means Shiva, the God.

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"Post-Shah Nawaz inquiry, Mochizuki became restless. In July 1957 he wrote to Nehru “whether the Government of India would now, in view of the inquiry committee report, like to consider the question of bringing the ashes back”. He was this time told by the embassy officials that the controversy “had not yet ended” for several Bose family members and so the ashes could not be taken to India.

"In November 1957 the aging priest again wrote to the Prime Minister, saying “Netaji’s soul is anxious to return to his fatherland as soon as possible”. He was backed by the Japanese government. The Indian embassy was told that it was “not the custom In Japan for ashes to be kept continuously in temples”. The embassy official spoke of the fix the Indian government was caught in:

"There has been no request from either Mr Bose’s family in Austria or his relatives in India and they may be embarrassed by having these ashes in India since, among Hindus, the ashes are cast into a river or otherwise scattered."

This point about embarrassment is incorrect; perhaps a convenient lie? Bose family in Calcutta would, if they were convinced of truth of the ashes being his, liked to proceed with rites including immersion in Ganga; his family in Austria would perhaps have liked to keep an urn of ashes (not bones, ashes) and have a monument, or concurred with Bose family in Calcutta about Hindu rites.

But the main point has always been about identity, identification of the ashes, not about anything else.

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"Rather than going hyper about Touradjev’s crass assessment, the government officials should have dismissed it out of hand. Actually, in 1988 Touradjev’s article was translated and reproduced in a special commemoration volume brought out by Kolkata’s Scottish Church College, Bose’s alma mater. No one took the demeaning inferences seriously."

That is comment on the said college, even without author making it clear that no one took it seriously, which is a matter of course.

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One really doesn't know what the author could possibly have, after he has given a succinct summary at the very introduction, of the repeated denials by the Government of India and efforts to deny all possibilities in face of evidence otherwise, of existence of Netaji on earth past August 1945; a few chapters are details thereof, and it's more than worthwhile reading, even necessary as an eye opener for those retaining any innocent trust.

The revelations begin thereafter, from story of arrival of Bhagwanji, the holy man in Ayodhya reputed to be Netaji. Still, once one has accepted the possibility or even likelihood, one expects more about the transformed, not the younger, self.

Perhaps the author isn't equal to that aspect, although he does of necessity give some clues.

But the zingers, beyond expectations, are where further disclosures come, in form of Bhagwanji’s revelations regarding activities of his younger self and more.

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Author questions the report of intelligence inquiries regarding Bhagwanji being not made available to Mukherjee Commission.

Author mentions about CIA taking cognizance of Raj Narain being affected by Bhagwanji passing on, to the extent that he was hospitalised, in 1986, having been firmly of the opinion that it was Netaji. He argues that if CIA was taking notice, intelligence agencies of India were unlikely to be totally oblivious, regardless of the view anyone had of Raj Narain.

Author mentions being told by more than one journalist, when he visited the area, of being dissuaded by some IB operatives from delving too closely into the mystery of the holy man reputed to be Netaji.

He quotes IB being questioned by Khosla Commission on this, and denying it, to the extent possible.

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Perhaps those are the reasons, if one believes any of it, - and there seems no reason not to if, in the first place one acceptsthe identificationof the two - why his family in Austria was of inclinations they were, even if opposed seemingly to one another.

If Netaji was so active during the post war, post independence decades, when the government of India was busy denying any possibility of his having survived 1945, then a definite possibility, even likelihood, is that his wife Emilie was kept informed by him, and thus completely unwilling to entertain the entreaties by government of India to state opposite to concur in their endeavors to establish their position.

It's equally natural, in this light, that his daughter on the other hand only thought of a little peace for Bose clan instead, replacing the surveillance by the Government, and perhaps also of a tad more security for the father, too, as a result.

And, last but not least, if one accepts the identification, then perhaps the communication from Netaji to his wife need not have involved any material whatsoever.

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" ... Nehru’s stirring "Tryst with Destiny" speech had not a word about the man but for whom the day would not have come in 1947", author points out.

He points out that when constituent assembly decided to have portrait of Gandhi and H.V. Kamath pleaded that portraits of Lokamanya Tilak and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose be added, Rajendra Prasad just cut him out.

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Author answers those who site paucity of funds as deterrent to investigation in question of Netaji’s disappearance in 1945, with discussion of extravagant expenditures on monuments in Delhi to one family; and logic of "why bother about someone who isn't going to return", by applying that to all cases where it's equally applicable - namely, every murder across globe, regardless of stature of victim.

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Repeatedly, one is reminded while reading about the actions of government of India for over six decades after independence, of JFK, and author brings it up, quoting some portions of the final arrangements by Jim Garrison as depicted in the film.

He speaks of JFK act of 1992 in US as a consequence. He quotes Robert gates speaking with tears about hope of open information helping to get rid of suspicions about his agency.

One must say, it's unconvincing, if one has seen the gilm, so faultlessly written - one somehow suspects that if they did fo it, it would very possibly be left secret even despite all legislation about open information.

And the history of government of India acting regarding Netaji’s disappearance and question of his being alive, as delineated by author so far, only serves to strengthen that suspicion rather information a certainty.

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Author here gives a personal wish list, which includes a similar act in India, to be named appropriately after Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, beginning, with government of India declaring Netaji the first head of government of free India, and express gratitude to Japan for help.

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Author talks of Ramamurti, Ayer and Takakura, who was reportedly threatened by the former for years.

Ramamurti and his brother were seen by Japanese to be living in luxury in post war era when wealthy Japanese found times hard, author mentions.

Author quotes correspondence between Indian mission in Tokyo, Governor of Bombay and the PMO, with clear implication that Figges was involved too in the theft of INA treasure.

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The then PM Jawaharlal Nehru refuted a suggestion that the treasure finally recovered and brought to India be sent yo bose family to be exhibited in the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose museum they planned to set up in his birthplace, Cuttack.

Nehru wrote against it claiming it as an excuse that the Bose family had not accepted that Netaji was dead.

But he did call it "rather cheap jewellery chiefly silver and gold articles rather broken up", having seen it, with nary a thought for the thousands of Indians who had donated everything they could, to help in efforts of the man they trusted, to fight for freedom of India.

One has to question the stories fed to India since Independence about Nehru family having donated all yo India, if he saw gold and jewellery worth Rs 90,000/- in early fifties, and thought it was cheap.

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Author begins on the question with war criminals, a question by Thevar to Shah Nawaz Khan, who sent him out to deliberate with foreign office official before calling him back, only to say that government of India did not know; this enraged Thevar, whoo rightly retorted asking why he should cooperate with a government that lacked power to protect its citizens.

Author next mentions a query by Indian people to UN in 1997, answered by Tharoor on behalf of Kofi Annan, that UN lacked the power to remove a name from a list by member Nation.

Author next presents the list by British government of India, which has several INA and Azad Hind officials names, but points out that they were army officers, while Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose was a civilian.

Author has, like another writer on the subject of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, has mentioned a US journalist of WWII era clamoring about Netaji’s being war criminal because "he killed Americans"; this should make all participants of US Civil War effectively War criminals, and so should the few hundred or so accused of murders in US every year, or at least those convicted; but in all fairness, the logic must extend beyond US victims, in which case UK war criminals list could be headed by George Washington. Then one could consider war criminals lists by Iraq and Afghanistan, after one by Vietnam.

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Perhaps not as surprisingly as one might think, author finds it outrageous that a witness testified that Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah and Maulana Azad had all agreed to hand over Netaji, if and when he returned, to British authorities.

Not as surprising because a good many people, while acidic about faults of Jawaharlal Nehru, are still treating Gandhi as touchstone of virtue bordering on saintliness.

Whatever the truth about that, fact remains that, among other great things that can be said on the other dide, it's also indubitably a fact that when Gandhi's consent and cooperation was needed and he could have set his terms, or at least held out, he made a mild gesture only, of asking for Bhagat Singh and others' sentences to be reconsidered, and when denied, promptly signed.

It's equally undeniable that after each massacre, Kerala, Noakhali or East Pakistan, he advised Hindus to duffer it with love for those massacred them, but not flee; he in fact demanded that government of India force refugees to return, even if certain to be massacred, and meanwhile evicted in dead cold of midwinter on streets of Delhi from the only shelters they had found, old, women, children, babies and all, just so those muslims who had remained or returned could enjoy a feast - and not only this was done by police using sticks to beat the homeless refugees who had lost homes, homelands and far more, but then he joined those feasting for the celebration.

Author says that witness had no evidence. He should know that not all evidence is documented certification with notarized signatures.

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Author next goes into whether Vijaylaxmi Pandit and Radhakrishnan, two first ambassadors of India to USSR, knew of presence of Bose in Russia.

The section after discusses allegation the effect that Nehru pocketed the INA treasure. Author quotes Subramanian Swamy on this, ending with the value - two trunks filled with 2 crores, and 20 crores, respectively, worth gold and diamond jewellery, that were deposited to Nehru’s account and never heard of again., as per Dr Subramanian Swamy.

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CONTENTS

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Prologue

1. Bose mystery begins

2. Big brother watching

3. Enter the Shaulmari sadhu

4. Shooting star Samar Guha

5. A proper inquiry at last

6. The search for Bose files

7. Ashes which turned to bones

8. How India dealt with Russia over Subhas Bose’s fate

9. The ‘Dead Man’ returns

10. Why ‘Dead Man’ tale can’t be wished away

11. Subhas Bose alive at 115?

12. Resolving the mystery

Appendix

I: The loot of the INA treasure

II: The strange case of Taipei air crash

III: Views of Subhas Bose’s family on his fate

IV: Was Subhas Bose a war criminal?

V. The land of conspiracy theories VI. The men who kept the secrets About the author

Notes on public domain information, including declassified records and information accessed under transparency laws

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REVIEW

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Prologue

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"We learn about the past largely from the historians and researchers working on the information available in public domain—in archives, libraries or in private collections. There isn’t much the historians can do except to speculate when they know something is there but can’t reach it. The liberty of speculation is lost when they don’t even know that something exists."

"As in the preceding decades, in 2006, when we made our case before the Central Information Commission, a standard lookback at Subhas Chandra Bose climaxed with the breaking point in his relations with the Congress party in 1939. The twice-elected Congress president’s run-in with Mahatma Gandhi was the turning point of the Indian freedom struggle. Bose stood for treating non-violence and satyagraha as only a means to an end—“to be adjusted and altered, as exigencies and expediency demand”—on the path to swaraj, or complete freedom from the colonial rule. Saint Gandhi, on the other side, would “adhere to that ideal of highest standard of non-violence, even if the pursuit means sacrificing and giving up the political goal of swaraj”. [1]

"Gandhi and Bose had not hit it off well from the first time they faced each other in Mumbai’s Mani Bhawan in 1921. ... "

"Over the next two decades or so, most of which was spent in either jails or exile in Europe, Bose differed on several issues with the man he would call the Father of the Nation. He wore his heart on his sleeves throughout over a range of issues—the execution of revolutionary Bhagat Singh, possible dominion status for India, the need for modern industry, intra-party democracy and so on.

"With that sort of backdrop, Congress president Bose wasn’t going too far. In his own words, “the Gandhi Wing would not follow” his lead and he “would not agree to be a puppet president”. [2] Not allowed to work on his own terms, Bose was hounded till he stepped down. He created the Forward Bloc within the party, which further annoyed the entire top-rung leadership. They snatched the charge of Bengal state Congress from him and debarred him from contesting for any position in the party for three years. Screaming headlines in newspapers at that time would have you believe it was Bose, not the British, the top leadership was probably at war with.

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"The bitter smile that Dilip Kumar Roy saw on his best friend’s face was the result of the “most unkindest cut of all”. “Subhas Bose punished for ‘grave act of indiscipline’,” an 8-column Hindustan Times headline read. To Roy, “it was not the discipline that he minded. But that he was asked to eat humble pie and beg the high command to forgive him, when the boot was on the other leg”. [3] Roy felt that his friend was put through “the unjust humiliation” only because he had “the courage of his conviction and said openly that he did not believe in the cult of non-violence”. [4]

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"Many of the stalwarts who backed Gandhi against Bose at that time weren’t the peaceniks they professed to be. When they and their followers were running India years later, brute state force and streaming inputs from the Intelligence Bureau and not hallowed Gandhian principles saw India through. Goa was not liberated through satyagraha. Rebellious Mizos weren’t sent emissaries from Gandhidham; they got poundings from the Indian Air Force fighter planes.

"In 1940 Bose was a nowhere man. “Those who do not go with Gandhiji are politically dead,” [5] said a Gandhi supporter about the 43-year-old, just not ready for that sort of fate. So he exfiltrated himself to another theatre from where he could fight freely. It was in the national interest, but too bad it turned out to be in Nazi Germany. It could have been Russia, but the Soviets were just sympathetic. Nothing more. For all the right things it stood for, the United States sided with British colonialism. Bose came to despise the US. He wanted his country to be free above anything else. So, unmindful of dangers to his life, he escaped from British custody in India, crossed into Afghanistan and—passing through the lawless land which is now the haunt of Taliban and Al-Qaida—found his way to Berlin via Moscow and Rome. No Indian leader of his stature could ever think of the things he did.

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"India’s star freedom fighter was born in Nazi Germany. In a remarkable image makeover for Bose, from the politician Subhas babu, he became the military leader Netaji. As Netaji, Bose’s two initial contributions to the idea of modern India were a national slogan and a national anthem. His political opponents at home were compelled to accept them years later. They couldn’t think of anything comparable.

"On the run from the biggest power on earth, Bose mixed fearlessly with the deadliest men of his times. They were his friends by default, for they were the enemies of his enemy. Apply the body language rules to the pictures which have recently been made public through Wikimedia Commons by the German Federal Archive and you will see Bose on the high table with Hitler's top brass, having them eating out of his hand."

Indeed, the photograph given is very clear. As is the next one.

"The tilt in monster Heinrich Himmler’s mannerism is for real. Obviously, like Benito Mussolini before him, the Reichsführer was drawn to the fugitive Indian like an iron clip to a magnet. The admiring look in Adolf Hitler’s devilish eyes as Bose gives him a firm handshake is an iconic freezframe for many, continuing embarrassment for others and a stick to beat Bose with for those who abhorred him for entirely domestic reasons.

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"A German pointed out to me that before he joined the Axis, Bose had opposed Gandhi’s protégé Jawaharlal Nehru’s idea that the European Jews could be given sanctuary in India. ... "

One, neither was quite in charge of India at the time, so it was loud thinking; two, thus person didn't say why bose said this; three, UK gave Jewish children refuge in UK, and if Germany had agreed, could have offered refuge to all Jews of Europe in India, but didn't.

And meanwhile, Gandhi had said something far more horrible in the context, very akin to what he said about Hindus massacred by muslims, whether in Kerala after khilafat or later in Calcutta, Noakhali or North-West before and during partition, didn't he? Something about the massacre victims must offer their lives lovingly to those killing them, instead of hating them for the brutal murderous assaults?

Whatever the reason Bose said what he did, it's light-years short of what Gandhi did, on scale of inhuman, sheer horror.

And Gandhi even included this as a demand in his last hunger strike, that Government of India force Hindu and Sikh refugees back into Pakistan, even if they were certain to be massacred immediately by muslims.

" ... I submitted that most Indians of that time couldn’t think of anything else except their own emancipation. On a personal level, Bose was as much humane and enlightened as any other Cambridge alumni. Between 1933 and 1939, for example, he had for friends Kitty and Alex, a sensitive, newly married Jewish couple in Berlin. Before they met, Kitty had heard an American priest in Berlin calling Bose a “traitor to the British government”. But in their first meeting, Bose came across to her as a “mystic, a spiritual man”. In their last, he told her to “leave this country soon”. [6]

"The couple went to the US and from her Massachusetts home in 1965 Kitty Kurti wrote her tribute for “Netaji”. She reminisced about the various issues they had discussed. Bose had told her about certain Hindu holy men who while physically far away could still be able to “appear and talk to you”. [7] Kitty noted that Bose “did not attempt to hide” [8] from her his deep contempt for the Nazis. In the same vein, he cited India’s exploitation by British imperialism and explained why he had to do business with the Nazis. “It is dreadful but it must be done. …India must gain her independence, cost what it may,” [9] he told the couple after a meeting with Hermann Göring. Of Jews, Bose said, “they are an old and fine race” gifted with “depth and insight” and felt that they had been “miserably persecuted” across the centuries. [10]

Surely he didn't develop this thought during that year or do in Berlin, but had had it much longer?

He wasn't a politician comparable with Gandhi, but wore his heart on his face, his thoughts no different from his speech. Isn't that why he was thrown out by Congress? And, too, admired by even those who knew he criticised them publicly, the nazis - even top ones?

It's easy and even a cheap gimmick, to write a letter to Hitler, addressing him as friend and advising him to stop being violent. Bose faced him in his own territory after criticising him publicly, openly.

He bearded the beasts in their dens! Anything, for India. India knew this, as did the beasts. Hence love and adoration from India, admiration from the beasts.

Couldn't they have thrown him into any of the infamous camps without a moment's notice? Any time.

Couldn't they have handed him back, over to British, if all he was, was only a bargaining chip? Certainly.

What did they do? That much is open history.

"It was India’s interest that mattered to Bose foremost. Nehru’s idea about bringing European Jews to poverty-stricken India was airy, unworkable and only good for grabbing headlines. So long as Nehru and his family ruled India, I told the German, Israel was not allowed to open its embassy in New Delhi. There is an old Indian saying: An elephant has two sets of teeth. One for the purpose of eating and the other for flaunting."

Except the unnecessary inflicting of accusations against a noble elephant, all true. In fact, Indian passports issued in 1970s explicitly stated "not valid for Israel", unless one protested, and asked them to remove that; they did so, on one's asking, but only after warning you that then one couldn't travel to an Arabic country!

But after all, Gandhi had said Israel had no right to exist, because the land belonged to muslims who fidnt want Jews. Funny, he was of the opposite opinion when it came to Pakistan, and not only demanded Hindus and Sikhs return even if only to be massacred, but also told Nehru to not protest when pakistan claimed a different river instead of Ganga as border in East, grabbing millions more of square miles of India at birth.

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"An Indian Army assessment of 1946 said “the INA was 95% ‘ballyhoo’ and 5% ‘serious business’”. It was “still an embryo organisation” when it went to war; a “purely guerilla force…with no aircraft, no artillery, no heavy mortars, no tanks or AFVs,” a “David against Goliath but a David without a sling”. Out of 15,000-odd INA soldiers who actually saw action, 750 were killed; 1,500 died of disease; 2,000 escaped; 3,000 surrendered and the rest 7,000 fell into the British hands. “It was never a cause of real trouble or annoyance to the Allies,” [12] the report concluded.

"The trouble was just starting. An Indian Army officer intermingled with the imprisoned INA men “awaiting repatriation to India” to get a sense of their outlook. He reported back that it was no use trying to belittle Bose: “He is regarded by them as a ‘Leader’ who is honest, utterly sincere and who has raised the status of the Indian community in the Far East far above that of the other minorities under Japanese occupation.” [13] These people were then brought to India and put on trial at the very place they had vowed to march into. But the idea to make the Red Fort trials the Indian version of Nuremberg and Tokyo trials backfired. Bose’s war was justified."

That, more than anything else, explains his being hounded out by Gandhi and later the conduct of Nehru family. Neither could ever dream of matching the love, adoration, and more than anything, the loyalty he had, without asking, from India. And they knew it. If they feared his very existence amounting to their paling into nothing in the light, they were right. And they fo deserve just that, as history is revealed.

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"The humiliation of the INA soldiers—Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian—galvanised the Indians like they hadn’t been ever since India was brought under direct British government rule. The Governor of the present-day Indian state Uttar Pradesh wrote to the Viceroy in New Delhi in November 1945 that those hitting the streets were actually suggesting that “Bose is rapidly usurping the place held by Gandhi in popular esteem”. [14] INA’s GS Dhillon openly engaged in fistfights with his captors and dared the jury, including future Indian Army chief KS Cariappa, to hang him. They would have done so without any delay, but in the dead of night, city walls were plastered with handbills warning of bloody retribution. In 1946, the Intelligence Bureau—the spy agency that had monitored the Indians since 1885—reckoned that “there has seldom been a matter which has attracted so much Indian public interest and, it is safe to say, sympathy”. [15] The British were wise enough to see the writing on the wall."

And, as Attlee said in response to a question later, we're quick to pack up and flee, due to effects of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and his INA and their achievements in planting flag of India at Imphal despite all the hurdles and shortcomings of equipment, air support and provisions.

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"I wonder why do we Indians continue to think about Bose's fate? We are the sort of people who have never let any tragedy of howsoever gargantuan proportions overwhelm us. Millions died when Partition occurred and not a stone stands in their remembrance anywhere on Indian soil. I don’t know if it is a good or bad thing, but we have a knack for putting the past behind us. Controversies surround the death and assassinations of our three prime ministers and yet the cumulative interest in them is not a patch on the Bose mystery. So, there has got to be a little more than rumours and speculations for the people to keep it alive so many decades after Bose’s political clout dissipated even from his home state Bengal."

How profoundly true!

Perhaps, what's needed is only truth. All of it.

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"In the 1960s an unbelievable urban tale had conjured up Bose as a fugitive holy man in a remote corner of India. Kitty Kurti wondered if her friend was a “sanyasin, appearing now and then in this or that village”. [17] Those claiming to be speaking for “Bose” raised the bogey of a war criminal tag he couldn’t shake off due to the complicity of the Indian government, which had inherited all the international obligations of the Raj. Some others blamed the Nehru government for planting the holy man tales “knowing well” that Bose had died not in Taipei, but subsequently in a Siberian gulag.

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"Some thirteen years ago a court order reopened the case and the WWII mystery became a hot topic in the 21st century India. The inquiry of MK Mukherjee, a former Supreme Court judge, proved to be the gamechanger. The judge rapped the Government for not being sincere and evidenced that the story of Bose’s death in Taiwan was actually a Japanese smokescreen to obfuscate the trail of his escape towards Soviet Russia.

"The Government reacted with a vengeance as it received the report in 2005. Official sources trashed the judge and his “damp squib” [18] report in a Delhi newspaper leak. Sir Humphrey Appleby would have been proud of the Indian bureaucrats. They appeared to have picked up his stratagem on “how to discredit an unwelcome report”. Stage three: “Undermine the recommendations.” Stage four: “Discredit the person who produced the report.” [19]

"On 18 May 2006, the Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry report was placed before Parliament with a single-page Memorandum of Action Taken Report signed by Home Minister Shivraj Patil. Even a school report card would have been far more detailed. And when the Opposition lawmakers rose in protest, they were taken head-on by two Bengali battering rams, shattering the myth that all Bengalis care too much about the fate of the most famous of them all.

"Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi growled at the BJP members. “Why did the former Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee visit Renkoji temple and pay tributes to the ashes?” [20] Minister Pranab Mukherjee reasoned with the enraged parliamentarians: “You can have the full discussion, instead of making these types of off-the-cuff comments. Let there be a structured discussion....”[21]"

" ... To me it was “Pranab Mukherjee’s Mission impossible”. Should you find the title flattering because of the Tom Cruise-starrer it has been paraphrased on, let me put it crudely: The mission represented a botched attempt to cover up the Bose mystery.

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" ... Home Secretary K Padmanabhaiah submitted a Top Secret backgrounder discussing the case as seen by the jaundiced eyes of the Government. While it was being prepared, the Home Ministry asked Mukherjee’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to furnish a copy of the all-important Japanese record conclusively proving Bose’s death. The MEA responded that it had none.

"The Cabinet decided to stall for time and not bring the ashes to India. However, there was no stopping Pranab Mukherjee. Maybe he was privy to some ultra secret information. Or perhaps some Congress party psychic had told him, “Bose died in Taiwan; don’t bother about evidence.”

"So, the Bengali anti-hero—strictly in this instance only—hopped across the world in 1995 in a never-before quest to exorcise the ghost of Bose mystery. After meeting the Japanese Foreign Minister in Tokyo, Mukherjee flew to Germany. Sanitized official records speak of his meeting with Bose’s daughter Anita Pfaff who, against the wishes of her family, was eager to help Pranab Mukherjee in taking the ashes to India.

"But wait, why ask the daughter when the mother is still around?"

" ... I fail to understand how the same Indians could never empathise with Emilie Schenkl, who was not at peace even forty years after Bose had disappeared.

"Just before she died, Emilie was given a rude jolt by Pranab Mukherjee. He asked her to sign a paper so that the ashes kept in the Japanese temple could be taken to India as Bose’s ashes. According to a less charitable and probably bloated account, octogenarian Emilie was offered “a blank cheque”. “She was told that she could earn any amount in any currency for such a favour. She took the blank cheque and tore it to pieces, asking the emissary never to approach her in the future.” [22]

This, alone, is proof enough that she was always wife of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, one in spirit, whatever opinion any idiots hold about formalities.

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"A less disgraceful, but authentic, version of the event later emerged from Subhas’s Germany-based grandnephew Surya Kumar Bose:

"On 20 October 1995 auntie rang me after 10:30pm from her daughter Anita Pfaff’s home in Augsburg. She was quite agitated. She told me that Mr Pranab Mukherjee was coming to Augsburg on 21st October 1995 to convince her and Anita to give their approval for bringing the so-called “ashes” of Netaji to India. Mr Mukherjee also wanted her to sign a document which he would take back to India as proof of her approval. She again emphasised to me that she had never believed in the plane crash story and would neither sign any document nor agree in any way to bringing the “ashes” to India or to anywhere else. On 21 October 1995 Anita and her husband Dr Martin Pfaff had to take Mr Pranab Mukherjee out for lunch as auntie could not tolerate any discussion on the so-called “ashes” in her presence. Auntie told Pranab Mukherjee quite clearly that she did not believe that Netaji had died in a plane crash…and that those “ashes”…had nothing to do with Subhas. [23]

"Emilie was just stating the standard view held by almost all the Bose family members, and for good reasons.

"Surya had to speak with his grandaunt again when an Indian daily subsequently carried a news item (mis)quoting Pranab Mukherjee as saying that Emilie “had given her approval to the Government of India’s plans for bringing the ‘ashes’ to India, and that he (Mukherjee) had a document to prove it”. Emilie turned livid and

"reiterated that she had signed no such document and had approved of nothing. Mr Pranab Mukherjee was propagating an untruth for reasons best known to him and the Government of India. [24]"

................................................................................................

"In an ironical twist, Mukherjee, having returned to power in 2004, then sat in judgment on the commission report along with his other Cabinet colleagues. Since the chances of minister Mukherjee taking an objective view of judge Mukherjee’s report were bleak, there were murmurs of protest. Pranab was accused of trying to scuttle the commission’s inquiry and that probably led to his facing “mob fury in Kolkata” while his car was entering a hotel on 18 June 2006.

"“Mukherjee later said the report had already been placed in Parliament and ‘we wanted a discussion on the report but the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stalled the debate’.” [25]

"Going by the transcript of parliamentary proceedings, it was nothing like that. The promised “structured discussion” on the dismissal of the commission report took place in August 2006. In the Rajya Sabha, incensed MPs from different parties shouted at Shivraj Patil: “Why are you so keen to prove that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is dead?” [26] Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, another Bengali luminary, invited scorn that with his alleged help “Congress succeeded in putting to rest a debate on the subject”. [27]

"The highlight of the discussion in the Lok Sabha, before it was lost to interruptions, was the emotional defence of Justice Mukherjee and his report by Bose’s mannerly nephew Subrata Bose. He told the House that Mukhrejee’s name was recommended by the Chief Justice of India. He called him “a man of integrity”, who carried out “the inquiry with an open mind”. [28] Subrata could say so with conviction because he had closely followed the commission’s inquiry as a deponent. He accused the Government of deliberate “suppression of facts and information” and destroying files “which contained relevant information”. [29] His charge that the Government had indulged in destruction of evidence on Bose’s fate was seconded by Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee in her brief intervention."

"The Rajya Sabha discussion on August 24 was also drowned in the din. For some reasons it was scheduled to the ungodly hour of 8pm. Lasting up to 11.30pm, it was unusually lively and had many participants, the most outstanding of whom was former HRD Minister Dr Murli Manohar Joshi.

"Opening the debate, Dr Barun Mukherjee said if indeed the Government’s decision to dismiss the commission’s main findings was biased, “the future generation will not forgive us for that”. [32] Dr Chandan Mitra said he could not understand why certain Bose files were kept classified in the name of ties with certain friendly foreign nations. “Are the friendly countries more important or are the people of India more important?” he asked. “It is not a political question, it is a question of our nationhood,” he underscored and predicted that “the people of this country will not rest quiet even if it takes three more generations” [33] to get at the truth about Bose.

"Shivraj Patil’s response was made up of legalistic, political mumbo jumbo and oodles of cynicism. “If he were alive, what made him stay away from the country? Why did he not come, if he were alive?” [34] Dr Joshi gave him a rejoinder: “Suppose Netaji was arrested by some country, suppose he was not a free man? How could he come? Now, this is a thing which you have to find out, which the country has to find out… That is the most important thing. If you want to know it, and, if you can help it, well and good; otherwise, people will decide themselves what to do.” [35]

"Patil went for the jugular, going so far as to denigrate a former Prime Minister no longer around to defend himself."

Who?

................................................................................................

"Speaking in the Lok Sabha in 1978, Morarji Desai had to set aside the findings of GD Khosla and Shah Nawaz panels in view of glaring contradictions in evidence and “contemporary official documentary records”. After it was formed, the Mukherjee Commission directed the Government to produce those contemporary records.

"But on 18 December 2001, the office of Prime Minister Vajpayee, who had served under Desai as Foreign Minister, made an astonishing claim. A PMO affidavit said that “due searches” had failed to locate any such records and, therefore, the PMO was “not in a position to provide any clarification/explanation” why Desai “had made such statement on the floor of the Parliament”. Justice Mukherjee responded that some notings in a secret file suggested that such records were in existence earlier. Still the PMO had no clue.

"In 2006, the Congress-led UPA government latched on to the stand taken by the Vajpayee government. Home Minister Patil insinuated in Parliament that since the records referred to by Desai could not be traced, the former PM must have misled the nation. From this logic flowed Patil’s jibe that former PM’s 1978 “statement could have been motivated, not by reasons of law, but by reasons political”. [36]"

"Prime Minister Desai was all for continuing with the official policy on Bose’s fate. But he could not sustain it in the brazen fashion of his predecessors mainly due to the circumstances prevailing in 1978. Shivraj Patil was lucky to have not faced even a fraction of the pressure the MPs had mounted back then. They called for a fresh inquiry which could specifically sniff out secret records and reach out to the Russians. Desai bit the bullet and conceded that Bose death claims were inconclusive. There indeed were contradictions in evidence and the British Raj-era records did throw the air crash theory open to questions. Desai gave away this concession to get the monkey of “fresh inquiry” off his back. If there was any political dimension to Desai’s statement, it was this.

"The trouble for the Government started in 1999 when the Calcutta High Court assessed Desai’s statement in its right perspective and ordered that a new inquiry should be launched as a direct corollary to the PM’s admission in Parliament that the evidence on Bose’s death was inconclusive. Since Patil could not have faulted the court, he made dead Desai the fall guy. Official records show the UPA government using a shady logic to discredit Desai. It goes something like this: It is gospel when the “eyewitnesses” back the Taipei crash theory with contradictory statements and no supporting documentary evidence. But it is telling lies when a Prime Minister of India, a top notch follower of the Mahatma, makes a statement in Parliament repudiating the crash theory. Why? Because the Government can’t find the records on the basis of which Desai said so."

"Writing to Prime Minister Desai on 13 December 1977, Dr Majumdar drew his attention to recently declassified British records containing expressions of disbelief in the news of Bose’s death. Desai was still not convinced. In his reply dated 16 January 1978, he argued that “presumably...they were not sure whether the Japanese announcement was correct”. He asked the historian to cite more records. Majumdar in his 3 February 1978 letter referred to a record where an American journalist was quoted saying that he had seen Bose after his reported death. He also quoted from an IB report speaking of “discrepancies” in the air crash theory which made it “little doubtful” to arrive at “any definite conclusion”.

"After going through Majumdar’s letters, the official records and hearing the MPs, who repeatedly spoke of Gandhi’s disbelief in Bose’s death, Desai deduced what anyone who is not biased would: There was no finality to the case."

................................................................................................

"Barely a month after Shivraj Patil’s upholding the Khosla’s and Congress MP Shah Nawaz’s inquiries, Sayantan Dasgupta, Chandrachur Ghose & I filed an application under the RTI Act. Mission Netaji, our group, sought from Patil’s Ministry of Home Affairs the “authenticated copies of documents used as exhibits by the Shah Nawaz Khan and GD Khosla panels”. The idea behind this simple request was to better the understanding about the much-touted conclusions drawn by them. However, the Special Officer on Duty handling our RTI request evidently freaked out. He wasted no time in telling us that it could not be “acceded to” for reasons covered by section 8(1) of the RTI Act. This was the section empowering the Government to not to part with security classified information. Classified? In 2006? What on earth for?!"

"After receiving this point-blank refusal we complained to the Central Information Commission (CIC). Information Commissioner AN Tiwari was the adjudicator.

"In the first hearing, the ministry officials said they did not know of any such exhibits; because unlike the Mukherjee report the previous two had not appended any such lists. Obviously Shah Nawaz and GD Khosla were not on the same page as MK Mukherjee over transparency as well. Be that as it may, round one went to the MHA officials. Noting that “the matter was quite old and the institutional memory was quite blurred”, Tiwari directed us to seek specific documents. It was a tough task, considering that no details of the exhibits were available anywhere in any archive or library. But before the next hearing we were able to give the ministry a memory booster. A copy of a classified record listing out 202 documents used as exhibits by the Khosla Commission was furnished along with a revised application seeking release of all these documents.

"“Where did you get this from?” the officials protested in the next hearing. It was of no use; the tables had been turned on them. Tiwari directed the ministry to release the 202 records specified by us. He wondered why was the Government keeping thousands of Bose records secret. “Why don’t you send them to the National Archives?” he asked. He got the answer by the year end.

"A “Secret” letter from the Home Secretary, a friend of his, stated that the “matter had been considered carefully at the highest level in the ministry”. The records were determined to be “sensitive in nature” and disclosure of many “may lead to a serious law and order problem in the country, especially in West Bengal”. This was too much for Tiwari to bear. He noted that

"the matter was of a serious national importance...[and] in spite of that, the Ministry of Home Affairs had been taking a somewhat perfunctory position. They were seen to be unwilling or unprepared to take a considered view regarding which parts of the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s papers should be kept secret and for what reason. [39]

"Tiwari transferred the matter to be heard by the full Bench of the commission in an extraordinary session. On 5 June 2007 the full Bench of the CIC comprising Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah and Information Commissioners Padma Balasubramanian, Dr OP Kejariwal, Prof MM Ansari and AN Tiwari—who succeeded Habibullah as the chief—hammered home that the matter was of “wide public concern and therefore of national importance”.

"Government officials agreed because there was no running away from it. They bared fangs when I charged the Government with the destruction of records on Bose. Sayantan and Vishal Sharma, our youngest colleague, further contested their claim. Chandrachur retaliated that “the intention of the ministry is to hide and not disclose” and its “responsibility does not end just by saying that certain documents are missing or cannot be located”."

"As conceded by the MHA officials before the Bench that “the decision concerning disclosure has to be taken at the highest level”, in late September-November 2007, Home Minister Shivraj Patil took issue of the 202 records to the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs. The CCPA decided in favour of release because it was felt “the worst that the Congress-led coalition government may have to face was a controversy that would die a natural death”. [41]

"Despite this so-called “highest-level” decision, out of 202 only 91 exhibits were eventually released by the MHA to us. One paper—a note by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru—remained classified. There was no word about the rest 110—including Home, Foreign ministry records/files; letters from Home Minister, High Commissioner, Taiwan government and Intelligence Bureau Director; a report on the INA treasure said to have been lost along with Bose and a memo from Director of Military Intelligence over Mahatma Gandhi’s view on the matter. These papers were simply “unavailable”. The difficulty in accepting this skewed explanation was that many of the “unavailable” records contained information against the air crash theory.

"For instance, not to be found among the released papers was a 1952 “Top Secret” correspondence between then Commissioner for India in Port of Spain and the Foreign Secretary in Delhi. This commissioner was AM Sahay, Subhas Bose’s wartime diplomatic pointman. Now a Nehru loyalist, Sahay was making revelations that should have made the Government fidgety about Bose’s death. He characterized the air crash story as a “show” and revealed that he had come to know of Bose’s “death” probably before it had taken place.

"There is one thing extraordinary in the whole show which needs some explanation from the Japanese. So far as my information goes, Netaji was removed to a hospital after the accident and he died there. How is it that the crash took place on the 18th and the announcement regarding his death was made on the same day, or was it that the plane crashed on the previous day?"

"Sahay also provided a fairly good circumstantial detail that Bose had been planning to move to Soviet Russia in the last months of the war. Was this the reason why this record went missing? Because you see the Government of India, from the days of Nehru to the present, doesn’t even want to accept that there is a Russian angle to the Bose mystery. ... "

" ... Sahay had himself received a communication from Bose on August 16 for a rendezvous in Manchuria—the gateway to the USSR—and the same was conveyed to the Foreign Secretary in his now “unavailable” report.

"[Bose] informed me [in January 1945] that the Japanese would no more be able to lend much support to our (INA’s) fight in future. Japan was being attacked by American air force regularly, inflicting heavy losses on the Japanese, making it impossible for them to send their air support to our army in Burma or Manipur. Netaji said that he could see the end of the war in course of months and he wanted me to try to persuade the Japanese to allow us to establish direct contact with the Soviet Embassy in Tokyo. I was in Tokyo in the beginning of February 1945. I met General Tojo and the Chief of the General Staff and discussed the matter at length. I told them that if we could deal with the Soviets directly, we might be able to help in improving the Russo-Japanese relation that was necessary to strengthen Japan’s position. The plan was to proceed to Manchuria and be there when the end of war comes, so that we may be within Soviet sphere after the surrender of the Japanese. War came to an end on 15th August. A special messenger from Netaji came to see me on 16th from Bangkok with a letter from him asking me to get ready to secure transport from the Japanese and to leave for Manchuria, and to meet him there. He suggested that although the Soviets had declared war against the Japanese, it would be desirable to be arrested by the Soviet authorities in Manchuria because we could later negotiate with them and might persuade them to accept us as their friends and not enemies."

"Could the Government really have lost such “Top Secret” record of historical importance? A source confirmed to me that it had been taken out of the relevant file and only a trace of it was found in other secret records referring to it."

"A secret Intelligence Bureau report not given to us encapsulated details not conforming to the Home Minister’s worldview. The report was based on the inputs provided by a source who had heard Bose and the Japanese general overseeing his “last flight” say this: “They were talking about the ways of letting lose Mr Bose… His destination was already understood to be Soviet Russia.”

"According to yet another unavailable report of 17 October 1945, the Director of Military Intelligence (DMI) in China reported about interception of a secret Japanese message advising Bose “to be separated from his fellow travellers at the time of his journey from Burma in an aircraft”.

"“DMI’s supposition is that though Bose’s family were in that plane that crashed, Bose was not there and he subsequently escaped....”

"Also untraceable was a record which directly relayed to Prime Minister Nehru in June 1951 the confirmation that the Japanese had secretly committed themselves to sending their ally Bose to the USSR.

"In a nutshell, there it was; the latest in the several government successes in riding out the storm of the Bose mystery. But unlike previous occasions when the controversy was contained with the charge that it was a mere conspiracy theory, the year 2006 marked a turnaround. For the first time, unimpeachable evidence of an official cover-up emerged. And because it related to a six-decades-old controversy spawning mind-boggling subplots, taking a bewildering array of high-profile personalities in its fold and leaving a stockpile of classified records in its wake—it had to be India’s biggest cover-up."

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April 10, 2022 - April 10, 2022.

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1. Bose mystery begins

................................................................................................

"Much before it gained currency, the nomenclature “Bose mystery” was being used by a British colonel operating out of India’s intelligence hub in a cloistered corner of Delhi’s Red Fort. GD Anderson was in charge of one of the many entities pursuing the leads on Subhas Bose’s reported death and possible escape. For many months after the Japanese announcement, several British, Indian and even American officers, working in a somewhat grid-like formation, analysed, shared, questioned and re-questioned the gathered intelligence on an issue many smart-talking analysts on TV in India today would brush off as unintelligent stuff meant for the consumption of semi-literate conspiracy theorists."

"Lt Col Habibur Rahman’s loyalty to Bose was well-known. In INA compatriot Shah Nawaz Khan’s estimate, Rahman would have carried out his any order “even at the cost of his life”. Bose’s military secretary Col Mahboob Ahmed would elaborate that Rahman could keep secrets “all his life, unless countermanded by Netaji himself”. This sort of devotion, Mehboob recalled in the 1970s, could not have been understood unless one was in the INA. “We fought for India, but India was something very vague. Netaji was the symbol for which we fought.” [1]

"In 1946, Habibur Rahman held the key to unlocking the mystery of Bose’s fate."

"On August 14 Bose called a meeting at his seashore bungalow, just after receiving the details of the Japanese surrender to be announced the next day. In attendance were SA Ayer, Dr MK Lakshmyya, AN Sarkar, MZ Kiani, Maj Gen Alagappan, Col GR Nagar and Habibur Rahman. A view emerged that Bose should remain in Singapore “because at that stage he could not look for protection or help from any country”. [2] The other one was that he “should not surrender at Singapore as the British would be very vindictive”. [3]

"“No,” said Bose. He was resigned to his fate. “The worst they can do is to put me against the wall and shoot me and I am prepared for it.” Then he gave his men a final pep talk. “The tremendous sacrifices made by the soldiers of the Azad Hind Fauj and civilian population will not go in vain. …Your efforts should be to see that all we had done in the Far East should be known to our countrymen.” [4] In a prescient reading of the situation, Bose told them to expect “a tremendous effect on the freedom struggle” once the Indians knew of what they had done for them. The meeting broke with the decision that the INA would surrender as a separate entity and that it be conveyed to the Japanese general headquarters in Singapore."

"At 9.30am on August 16 Bose and others took off for Bangkok. Once there, Bose, Kiani, Rahman, Pritam, Ayer and INA Chief of Staff Maj Gen JK Bhonsle, headed to confabulate with Hachiya Teruo, Minister-designate to Azad Hind Government and Lt Gen Saburo Isoda & Colonel Kagawa of Hikari Kikan, the Japanese military unit liaising with Bose’s government."

"Hachiya proposed that Bose should fly to Saigon and contact Field Marshal Count Terauchi Hisaichi, the commander of the Japanese forces in South East Asia. Bose was OK with it. He gelled well with Terauchi, and Hachiya and Isoda were offering to accompany him to Saigon—the Ho Chi Minh City of today. At noon on August 17 two planes landed at a deserted Saigon aerodrome. Bose, Ayer, Pritam, Rahman and a Japanese officer arrived first, followed by Hachiya, Isoda, Col Gulzara Singh, Debnath Das and Major Abid Hasan, the man who had travelled with Bose in a German submarine to Japan. As Bose deplaned, a photograph—his last—was snapped."

"Bose sent for Rahman and in his presence

"the Japanese officers informed that it was not possible to get a separate plane for the party as was originally expected because the Allies had issued instructions to the Japanese government, which had surrendered on the 15th August 1945, not to fly any plane without their permission. They said, however, that one plane was leaving soon in which one seat was available. [8]

"Bose broke the meeting to consult with his other aides. Gulzara, Pritam, Hasan, Ayer, Debnath and Rahman were against Bose’s travelling alone. Accompanied by Rahman and Ayer, Bose rejoined the meeting and the Japanese somehow managed to secure one additional seat. In Rahman’s words,

"all three of us then returned and met the rest of the party. Here Netaji informed that now he had two seats to avail of. Netaji then asked as to who would accompany him. He looked at each of us who were standing and while he looked at me he said, “You will come with me....” [9]"

"At the Saigon airport a Mitsubishi Ki-21 bomber—the Allies called it “Sally”—was already on the taxi strip with its engines running when Bose and others reached at 4.30pm. The door clunked open and from it emerged a Japanese general the same age as Bose but appearing younger due to his glassy face, set off by a luxuriant moustache. Lt Gen Tsunamasa Shidei, staff officer of Terauchi’s HQ and just appointed deputy chief of staff of Quantung Army, greeted Bose and showed him in. Bose, donning his now trademark INA cap, khaki bush shirt and trousers, bid his men goodbye and got in, followed quickly by Rahman. Ayer, Hasan, Pritam, Gulzara and Debnath stood transfixed as the plane took off and then faded into the sky.

"Comfort flying was the last thing Bose and Rahman could expect in a bomber doubling as a transporter. ... Bose had been invited to the co-pilot’s seat on the starboard side, but he found it cramped. Shidei took it up and Bose preferred to sit behind the pilot. ... "

"Around 7pm the plane landed in Tourane, now Da Nang, on the south Vietnamese coast. Bose and other officers checked in at the largest hotel in the town. On the 18th morning they resumed the journey to Tokyo and at 2pm had landed at Matsuyama aerodrome in Taihoku, Formosa—today’s Taipei, the capital of Taiwan.

"Rahman emerged shivering; he had been feeling cold as the bomber notched up to 14,000 feet during the flight. He held out a pullover but Bose said he did not need it. Rahman put on a full sleeves bush shirt, coat, breeches and top long boots. It struck him somewhat odd to see Bose standing there and “looking into the distance”.

"This was Rahman’s third stopover at the scenic city surrounded with hills. The allied straffing had reduced the Matsuyama aerodrome into a picture of devastation, though. Bombed-out buildings were no longer in use and no hangar or any other plane was in sight. Only a skeleton staff comprising some groundcrew personnel was around. The only visually appealing site at the aerodrome was a colourful tent, where a light lunch was being served.

"We also helped ourselves to sandwiches and some bananas. All this took us about half an hour when we were signalled again to emplane. [10]

"And then the most contested air disaster in the history of India happened."

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Here follows an eyewitness story with gory details that make one shiver, of fire, crash, injuries, last message,

" ... About himself, he said that he felt that he would not survive. I replied, “Oh! God will spare you. I am sure you will be alright.” He said, “No, don’t think so.” He used these words: “When you go back to the country, tell the people that up to the last I have been fighting for the liberation of my country; they should continue to struggle, and I am sure India will be free before long. Nobody can keep India in bondage now.” [14]"

... hospital, treatment, last words, cremation due to unavailability of transportation for coffin, ashes!

"The urn containing the ashes was eventually flown to Japan on September 5 by Rahman, Sakai and Tatsuo Hayashida, a young officer posted in Taipei. By September 7 the urn had reached the Imperial HQ in Tokyo and the next day it was handed over to SA Ayer and Munga Ramamurti, a leading member of the Indian community in Japan.

"Before this happened, Ayer was told of Bose’s death on August 20 by Colonel Tada. Ayer wouldn’t believe it then. “Not a single Indian in India or East Asia will believe this story unless you produce conclusive proofs,” he told Tada. “I must see Netaji’s body with my own eyes. ...Do not tell me afterwards that Netaji’s body has been disposed of.” [23] Ayer was not taken to Taipei and he never saw Bose’s body. But the doubting information minister of Bose was persuaded by the Japanese to co-draft the news of his death. It was then released to the world through the Japanese news agency Domei on 23 August 1945. In India the news first appeared in the late editions of some papers on August 24. It fell like a hammer blow in Kolkata ... "

"In Japan too the news made it to all major newspapers. Shidei’s wife was devastated. The Quantung Army personnel in Manchuria mourned the death of the general who never joined them. If he had not died, Shidei would have been there when his superior General Otozo Yamada surrendered to General Alexander Vasilevski of the Red Army in the Manchurian capital on 22 August 1945. Ironically on the same day, the news of his death was announced.

"In Poona, Gandhi was informed. He made his first public appearance during the regular evening prayer. Looking grave, he told Congress volunteers to bring the Congress flag down and said nothing. Nehru broke down after being informed by the Press reporters in Abbottabad. “A mixed feeling of deepest sorrow and relief enveloped my soul for the present—sorrow because the great selfless leader passed away and relief because the brave man met with a brave and sudden death.” [25]

"“Now he belongs to history. And yet there will be deepest sorrow and gloom in every house in India,” said Congress leader Kiran Shankar Roy in Kolkata, where students organised several condolence meetings on the streets. The Amrita Bazar Patrika on 25th gave an overview of all India reaction: In Amritsar, all major markets did not open the previous day, a shut-down was to be observed in Ahmedabad on the 25th; in Karachi people were called upon to observe 26th as “Subhas Bose Day”. Hindustan Times had the details of the immediate reaction from the West.

"The death of Mr Subhas Chandra Bose reported by the Japanese has—if true—relieved the British authorities of a difficult problem, but has undoubtedly caused new pain in the heart of millions of Indians, writes Preston Groer, Associated Press of America staff correspondent…. At the same time many questioned whether the Japanese had co-operated in giving him an opportunity to “go-underground” and escape punishment for opposing Allied forces. [26]"

"Not just average people, the timing and inordinate delay in relaying of news had raised suspicions at the highest level in India. Viceroy Field Marshal Archibald Wavell recorded his disbelief in the Japanese announcement in his diary. “I suspect it very much, it is just what should be given out if he meant to go underground.” [27]

"For the Indian leadership the Bose mystery truly began on 29 August 1945 in New Delhi. The first spotting of Bose after his death was reported not by a gullible Indian but an American journalist embedded with the US army. Alfred Wagg, a stringer for the Chicago Tribune, rudely interrupted a press conference of Jawaharlal Nehru. He claimed Bose was “alive and seen in Saigon four days ago”."

Dhar has reproduced here a photograph of Wagg's accusations against Netaji calling him a war criminal because "he killed many Americans" and making accusations of him having "extorted money from poor in Burma and Malaya"!

By that definition, all of members of US and UK were war criminals, allies having bombed not only Hiroshima and Nagasaki but Dresden too!

................................................................................................

"On September 1, London’s Sunday Observer picked up Wagg’s claim and added that the Japanese report was “not believed in British and American military circles”. Wagg would repeat his claim to many top Indian leaders, Gandhi downwards. On September 11 in Jhansi, Nehru himself told a gathering that he did not believe in Bose’s reported death: “Yes, I have received a number of reports which have raised in me grave doubts and I disbelieve the authenticity of the news.” [28]"

"From late 1945 to early 1946, Mahatma Gandhi was chief promoter of the Bose mystery. “If someone shows me ashes even then I will not believe that Subhas is not alive,” he told jailed associates of Bose on 30 December 1945. His January 1946 statement made headlines world over. The New York Times on January 6 reported “Gandhi as declaring in a speech that he believed Subhas Chandra Bose was still alive and awaiting a propitious time to reappear”.

"All this had a ripple effect and, from villagers in India’s remote corners to the expats in Southeast Asia, all took a fancy to the idea that Bose was “in hiding” and would “come to India as the free President of a free country”.

"Bose’s family swung from despair to hope. Sarat, his elder brother and closest associate in politics, shook off early sense of devastation. He undertook a tour of Europe and learnt that the Allies had thrown discredit on the Taipei crash. “I am led to believe that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is alive,” he briefed the United Press in July 1946. “The story of the plane crash connected with his death is a myth.”"

................................................................................................

" ... At the official level—and in complete secrecy—multilayered, overlapping inquiries into Subhas Bose’s death were carried out, right up to the time Sarat spoke. Setting the ball rolling was the Intelligence Assault Unit of SEATIC—the signal-based South East Asia Translation and Interrogation Centre (SEATIC) under Louis Mountbatten’s South East Asia Command. Then followed the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) of the US army. South East Asia Command’s SACSEA Commission No 1—whose mandate was to lay hands on enemy Japanese—too pitched in. Several officers of the Intelligence Bureau dissected the all-source intelligence.

"And when Rahman and others were brought to India, they were interrogated by the CSDIC, Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre, a division of the War Office that ran interrogation centres around the world. All inputs were regularly fed to the Combined Section at the Military Intelligence Directorate in the GHQ, India. That’s not all. All the while, GSQ(i), psychological warfare section of India Command; American military intelligence service G-2 and the concerned governments were also kept in the loop.

"Behind the confusing abbreviations were faceless officers. Leading the pack was Combined Section head and IB Deputy Director W McK Wright. He was assisted by fellow IB Deputy Director WNP Jenkin. Other prominent names were of top Bengal cop and IB Assistant Director Phillip Finney, who led the field inquiries in Bangkok in tandem with Assistant Director WFM Davies, who went to Saigon. Under them were a couple of Indians. Only one was senior and trusted enough to work with them on equal terms: “Rai Bahadur” Bakshi Badrinath of the Intelligence Bureau.

"GD Anderson headed the CSDIC, India. From CSDIC’s “S Section” in Southeast Asia was reporting Major Hugh Toye—who would go on to write Bose’s first proper, almost laudatory, biography in the 1950s. In Japan, Lt Col John Figges was the point man. He was a staff officer attached to Lt Gen Gairdner, the British representative at General Douglas MacArthur’s HQ in Tokyo."

"On 30 August 1945, the office of Allied Land Forces, Southwest Pacific Area, told the Japanese government that “it would be appreciated if inquiries could be made as to the veracity of the report.” GHQ India also wanted Rahman to “be flown to India for interrogation”. The Japanese government by mid-September had sent a bare to the bone “interim report based on information so far available”. It contained a date and time-wise chart of Bose’s last movements and a short, grossly insufficient account of his death. ... "

"In fact, before the Japanese government report reached Delhi, a Military Intelligence note of September 14 from the South East Asia Command had analysed the “reactions to Bose’s death and the INA problem”. It noted—just as Bose had foreseen—that the nationalist Press in India had “risen in defence of the INA”. The news of Bose’s death had been “received in most quarters in India with sympathy”. But in Bengal it was “generally believed that Bose has gone underground to reappear at the correct psychological moment”. Alfred Wagg’s claim quite obviously had created a flutter among the leaders. “Political circles in the province have been greatly interested in the recent news item which alleged that Bose had been seen alive in Saigon after the aircraft accident.” [29]

"In his first report sent from Bangkok on 5 October 1945, Finney threw light on several aspects, including the likely place Bose could have escaped to. “The general opinion among Indians here is that Bose is not dead but has probably managed to evade Japanese control and has made his way to some place occupied by the Russians.”

"However, Finney’s two informants ruled this out, insisting that Bose died while on his way to Tokyo. General Isoda, who by that time had given a statement to the British, took the same position. One informant, who had seen Bose off at Bangkok airport, told Finney that the Indian leader “did not confide in anyone what his intentions were”. Finney was unwilling to believe the informant on this point:

"It is more than likely that the informant is deliberately concealing this information. He does however say that he thought Bose was on his way to Tokyo to discuss final arrangements for an attempt on his part to get permission to go to Manchuria where he could contact the Russians. This informant says that Bose had been trying to persuade the Japs to allow him to go to Moscow since October ’44, when he told them that they had no chance of invading India through Burma, and that accordingly he would prefer to try another road to Delhi via Moscow. [30]

"Finney referred to another circumstance which contradicted the line taken by the Japanese and Rahman that Bose was going to Tokyo to discuss surrender and was to return to Singapore. “Bose took with him four iron boxes of gold. The weight of each is not known, but was probably in the region of 50 lbs. Bose and his staff took a formal farewell of everybody, and indicated that they were not likely to come back to this part of the world.”

"Finney also found Isoda’s presence around this time suspicious. “At the time Bose arrived in Saigon, General Isoda was also there, and this fact may be significant if there was any plan on the part of the Hikari Kikan to allow Bose to escape, and to publish a false story regarding his death. This would have been the ideal place for Isoda to put into operation any such plan.” [31]

"Enclosed with Finney’s first report was a record of the translated text of secret telegrams exchanged between Isoda’s Hikari Kikan in Bangkok and the Southern Army in Saigon. Their originals had been found on September 24 “in their proper place” by the Intelligence Assault Unit (IAU) of the 7th Division of Allied Land Forces in Burma. These were the only Japanese records referring to Bose’s flight to Tokyo and the subsequent air crash.

"Lt D Mithaell of IAU interrogated a Hikari Kikan major to understand their true import, but the Japanese officer “knew no more than was given out in the Domei report”. He had seen “neither the photographs nor other proofs of the accident” mentioned in the telegrams. As per one telegram, they were taken to Tokyo by Colonel Tada. Mithaell’s conclusion was that the “proof, if any, might be in Saigon”. [32]

"Finney felt suspicious about the telegrams as well. “If they are part of a colossal and well-executed deception manoeuvre, this file of telegrams, along with numerous other documents, must have been purposely left where the British would find them.” In conclusion, Finney felt that “although at this stage one cannot rule out the possibility of Bose being still alive, and of these telegrams being a part of deception plan regarding himself, (particularly in view of his previous intentions of escaping to Russia), the general impression from the study of these documents and the talk with Isoda and my informant is that Bose did actually die as stated”.

"To root out the doubts coming in the way of accepting the finality of Bose’s death in Taiwan, Finney suggested a line of action involving tracing of Hikari records in Saigon as well as the photographs and remains of Bose, finding both Tada and Rahman and re-examining Isoda. He ended his report with an advice which was most sensible at that time. Continuing rumours of Bose being alive were further boosting the morale of everyone who wanted the end of the Raj.

"Considerable time is being spent on these inquiries, and it is therefore requested that any conclusive information, one way or the other, should be circulated as soon as possible. [33]"

................................................................................................

"A day before he left Bangkok for Kolkata, Finney blew the lid off the centerpiece of the official Japanese version. He was able to locate a person who had attended the secret meeting between Bose, Rahman, Isoda, Tada and others in Bangkok on August 16. Contrary to what Rahman and others had claimed, interpreter Kinji Watanabe told Finney on November 12 that he heard Isoda and others talk about Bose’s escape:

"They were discussing how to get Mr Bose to his destination. It was generally understood that he was to get to the Russians, probably to Manchuria. …With regard to Bose’s going to Russia, it was an understood thing in the embassy and in the Hikari Kikan.... [38]"

"In his written statement, Watanabe provided further details about Bose’s post-war plans:

"From the very beginning Bose’s standpoint was very clear: He was ever ready to accept any assistance from any nation if only it desired India to be independent. No doubt he wished to get nearer to Soviet Russia after the telling blow was inflicted upon Japan and his troops, which made him almost give up hope to advance into India from Burma. [39]"

"He wrote that “Bose was quite sure that in the not-distant future there would be differences between Britain and Russia and that by taking advantages of this opportunity India could proceed further in the independence movement”.

"The much awaited pictures taken by the Japanese at Taipei soon after the crash and Bose’s death arrived in New Delhi in the second half of November. Figges made no comment while forwarding them from Tokyo. Because none of the five pictures showed the clincher—Bose’s body. One showed Rahman sitting, bandaged, the other a shrouded corpse and the rest had shots of a mangled plane wreck in front of a hilltop."

................................................................................................

"In December, CSDIC (India) took custody of Rahman after he had been brought to Delhi by a US military plane on November 23. Throughout that month, Rahman was put through several rounds of interrogations. The outcome was CSDIC Section Report No 1156 of 31 December 1945. On 7 January 1946, Anderson wrote to the Combined Section, IB and others that “the facts of the crash at Taihoku as given in the CSDIC Report No 1156 are considered to establish beyond any doubt that SC Bose did in fact succumb to injuries and burns received in the crash”. [41]

"Anderson was confident that Rahman was “sincere in his protestations” and suggested that “for the final and positive proof, a British investigation team would need to be sent up to Formosa from Saigon and Hanoi to examine the hospital records at Taihoku”. [42]

"And just when it seemed that an end to the mystery was in sight, Anderson was forced to do a rethink.

"Major Toye informed him on January 15 that Pritam, Gulzara, Hasan, Sahay, Thivy and Chatterji “have no positive information either on the death of or on the last intentions of Bose” but still called into question Rahman’s claim."

"The choice of persons to accompany Bose is, however, we think, strange if Habib’s story be accepted that Bose was merely going to arrange a separate surrender. Bose first calls Chatterji and Swami to his side: these two are held up and do not reach him. He then takes Gulzara and Pritam—both Kamkazi boys, Hassn, who knows more about his activities (1941-1944) than any man alive, Ayer, his main confidant and secretary on all Top Secret matters at any rate recently, Debnath, the man closest to him after Ayer and with more experience of political underground than any. Our question is “to what end this wealth of talent if Bose was only going on a routine INA job which Bhonsle or Kiani could have done just as well?” [43]"

"McK Wright found it intriguing that Shidei should have been travelling to Manchuria when the crash happened. “In view of reports…that Bose himself was going to the Russians was this coincidence or intention?” he asked and recommended that Isoda should be “severely re-interrogated” now that Watanabe had confirmed that Bose too was Manchuria-bound."

................................................................................................

"Nine days later Anderson and McK Wright received an eye-opener of a report from Toye. It contained a piece of information which in one swoop falsified the statements of all those whom Bose confided in during his last known days.

"Despite severe interrogations, Isoda, Rahman, Gulzara, Pritam, Hasan, Thivy and Chatterji had so far either feigned ignorance about Bose’s future plans or claimed he was heading to Tokyo to talk of surrender. Anand Mohan Sahay broke the ranks to talk freely and laid bare Bose’s intentions. Sahay sang before the S Section that Bose had raised the issue of his transfer to Russia with the Japanese foreign minister in late 1944 and that it was confirmed to him by Bose personally and also by Isoda. Sahay compromised his colleagues by telling the section that when Hasan, Ayer, Gulzara and Pritam met him at Hanoi on August 20, “they told him that Bose was bound for Manchuria”. Toye drew the obvious inference:

"At all events, the story told by Habib ur Rahman (B1269) in CSDIC 2 Sec Report 1156 that Bose was merely going to arrange a separate surrender for the INA and that he would have returned to Singapore, may be categorically rejected, and it may be accepted that B1269 himself probably knows the truth. [53]"

"Hyat Khan noted after the interrogation that Bhonsle “gave the impression that he—and some others—had some idea of Bose’s plans in Russia, but refused to commit himself”.

"He evaded all questions relevant to this subject, merely saying that “if Bose’s exact plans were known by his trusted henchmen, none of the latter would ever reveal them now”. [57]

"This was enough for Anderson to deduce and convey to McK Wright that as Rahman was present at the Bangkok meeting “it is obvious that he must know as much, if not more, about Bose’s plans”. And since Rahman was continuing to make “bland denials of any such knowledge…a final attempt will now be made to extract the truth from him”. [58] This attempt was made by Hyat Khan. On receipt of his report on March 25, Anderson wrote to McK Wright that Rahman had still “adhered to his earlier attitude of ingenuous denial”. [59]"

"Rahman repeated that during the Bangkok meeting “the main subject under discussion was the separate surrender of the PGAH [Provisional Government of Azad Hind] and INA”. He admitted that during the meeting, “they discussed the possibility of his transfer to Russia, but thought that in view of the strained Russo/Japanese relations the Japanese government/army were not in a position to negotiate with Russia”. [60]

"Rahman described as “purely hearsay” the claims of others that “after the INA withdrawal from Burma, the members of the PGAH and some other senior INA officers had discussed at Bangkok the possibility of approaching Russia for assistance in order to prolong their struggle”. He said he was “himself not present at any such talk” and that Bose “confided in him in so far as matters relating to the armed forces were concerned, but that he (Bose) did not discuss his political plans” with him."

"Anderson emphasised in his 25 March 1946 letter to McK Wright that Rahman’s “equanimity could only be shaken if positive facts could be adduced to disprove his account of Bose’s death at Taihoku” and wondered if the proofs—hospital records that he had earlier specified—“have been obtained from local sources or inquiry at Taihoku”. [62]"

"Hyat’s report on Rahman prompted the IB to raise a series of questions. On 2 April 1946, Jenkin listed out 19 of them to Anderson and sought a re-interrogation."

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"Some eight months after the reported air crash, the inquiry into Bose’s fate seemed to be leading up a blind alley. In the early months of 1946, Sir Norman Smith, the IB Director, visited London and “mentioned the receipt from various places in India of information to the effect that Subhas Bose was alive in Russia”. Some circumstantial evidence was forthcoming and consequently Smith was “not more than 90% sure that Subhas is dead”. He was made aware of and recognised the possibility that the Russians were themselves “circulating the story for reasons of their own”. [63]"

" ... Finney and others sat down for a meeting on 9 April 1946 to ponder over the intelligence pooled in from several independent sources in the last few months. Helping the discussion was a three-page note from the Combined Section summarising the case so far. It noted at the very start that it was “clear that Bose and his staff were trying to make a getaway to Russia” and that “Habibur Rahman, Pritam Singh, Gulzara Singh and Hasan have all…appear to have lied, or withheld their knowledge, about the reasons for the journey which was being made”. Inputs received by the intelligence organisations from Congressman revealed that Gandhi’s claim about Bose being alive was not based on his “inner voice” as he had said, but “a secret information which he has received”. [64]

"The note highlighted—just as Anderson had done earlier—the need for carrying out “the fullest investigation” in Taiwan because “such investigations as have been carried out at Taihoku and elsewhere do not appear to have been as thorough as could be wished”. [65] Puzzling information coming from outside was also making it difficult to accept the air crash theory.

"In December a report said that the Governor of the Afghan province of Khost had been informed by the Russian Ambassador in Kabul that there were many Congress refugees in Moscow and Bose was included in their number. There is little reason for such persons to bring Bose into fabricated stories. The view that Russian officials are disclosing or alleging that Bose is in Moscow is supplied in a report received from Tehran. This states that Moradoff, the Russian Vice Consul-General, disclosed in March that Bose was in Russia. [66]

"Summing up, the note said that “Taihoku, Congress and Russian representatives in Tehran and Kabul are the most important objectives in this case as it stands now”. [67]"

"The outcome of the April 9 meeting attended by Finney and certain Wagstaffe is not known. The file which contained the related papers is not available and was probably destroyed—but what comes through clear is that the case was far from closed. On April 10, Anderson informed Jenkin about the outcome of Habibur Rahman’s re-interrogation. It had been carried out by Capt Habibullah Malik, who personally briefed Jenkin about Rahman’s response and his “reactions to further interrogation etc.”. [68] Malik had observed in his report that “throughout the protracted questioning, resentment was visible from B1269’s face and he made no bones about it”. [69]"

"The results obtained are far from satisfactory and do not take us much further from the original position. Habibur-Rahman has shown little cooperation during the course of this re-interrogation and when in answer to his attitude of ingenuous denials under the cloak of forgetfulness and the undue advantage that he appeared to be taking of his stuttering habit, his interrogator put him a direct question whether he was prepared to allow himself to be taken to Taihoku and point out all relevant places, he thought for moment and then replied in the negative with a retort saying: “I have volunteered all the information that was in my possession…. I have satisfied Mr Gandhi, who came to see me the other day, that SC Bose is dead and reiterate whatever I have stated already in Tokyo and at CSDIC.” [70]"

"Gandhi had by that time gone public with his revised stand. Writing in Harijian in April 1946, he appealed to “everyone to forget what I have said and …reconcile themselves to the fact that Netaji has left us”.

"I had nothing but my instinct to tell me that Netaji was alive. No reliance can be placed on such unsupported feeling. On the other hand, there is strong evidence to counteract the feeling. The British government is party to that evidence. Capt Habibur Rahman has said, he was present at the time of Netaji’s death and has brought back his charred wrist watch. [71]"

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"The British were obviously not convinced. On May 16 the South East Asia Command directed Col Figges in Tokyo to make a fresh inquiry. At the same time, and in an apparent coordinated move, Lt Col Hannessy, the head of Military Intelligence in Bombay, raised the issue with William Donovan, the American Consulate General. Hannessy, who had met Badrinath in March, told Donovan that in August 1945 he was himself in a Taipei prison camp, “which overlooked the airfield where Bose’s plane is reported to have crashed”. He said that “Bose must have been treated in a hospital by some physician; that if he died there must be people who had first-hand knowledge of his death and that there might conceivably be some record of his death; and that further, in the event of his death, there must be person alive today who had some knowledge of his cremation”. [72]

"Donovan obliged Hannessy by writing to the State Department. “If the Department could furnish any information on this subject, it would be most helpful to this Consulate General in its contacts with British Military Intelligence at Bombay. Positive proof of some kind that Bose is dead would be most interesting,” [73] his telegram of 23 May 1946 stated. The State Department conferred with the War Department in the Pentagon and in June 1946 reverted to the Consulate: “A search of our files in the Intelligence Division reveals that there is no direct evidence that Subhas Chandra Bose was killed in an airplane crash at Taihoko [sic], Formosa, despite the public statements of the Japanese to that effect. Nor is there any evidence available to the Intelligence Division which would indicate that Bose is still alive.” [74]

"The Department advised that the British Military Intelligence should approach G-2, the intelligence agency under Supreme Commander Allied Powers, Tokyo, for further information. It is not known whether the British intelligence sought any details from G-2. What is known, thanks to declassified records, is that by July 25 Colonel Figges was ready with his report. This time he had managed to examine two survivors of the crash—Nonogaki and Arai; three Taiwan army officials who had some personal knowledge of the events and most importantly Sub Lt Dr Toyoshi Tsuruta. To Figges their accounts appear to have tallied “both in substance and detail at all points where the knowledge of the subjects could have been deemed to be based on common experience”. [75]

"Nonogaki recalled the air crash and that out of 15 passengers in all, three engineers, a wireless operator, Takizawa and Shidei died instantly. Dr Tsuruta said he supervised Bose’s treatment after he was brought to the hospital at 3pm, but despite his best efforts he passed away around 7pm. Later that evening, Tsuruta, Rahman and Lt Col Shibuya Masanori of the Taiwan Army HQ and another officer discussed “the possibility of embalming the body and taking it on to Tokyo” but Tsuruta “expressed doubts about his ability to ensure preservation in the extreme heat”.

"Towards midnight a hastily made coffin arrived from the headquarters of the Taiwan Army and the body was placed in the coffin and covered with a sheet. The following morning the coffin was taken away and Tsuruta understands that it was cremated although he was not an eyewitness of the process. The death certificate which was issued by Tsuruta showed death to be due to heart failure resulting from multiple burns and shock. [76]"

"Three months after Figges believed what he had been told, Dr Yoshimi made a statement contradicting his junior on some vital points. While being held up in a jail in Hong Kong, Yoshimi told Alfred Turner of the British military that he was in charge of Bose’s treatment, that it was he who had issued his death certificate. His version was that around 5pm the crash survivors were brought at the hospital and Bose died at about 11pm. Yoshimi said that he had been informed that the plane crash killed Shidei and two others who were “unable to escape and were burned with the plane”. He said Takizawa reached hospital alive and was under his care for a few days before he shifted him to another hospital where he died.

"“For some unknown reason”, Bose’s body “could not be taken to Japan, and was to be sent to the crematorium for cremation,” Yoshimi added. “I therefore made out a death certificate, stating the cause of death to be extensive burning and shock.” [77]

"The death certificate issued by either Yoshimi or Tsuruta would have filled in the most crucial slot in the puzzle and convinced the officers in India, at least Anderson, that Habibur Rahman and other witnesses had, after all, told the truth. But both the doctors only talked of issuing the certificate; they did not produce it. Where was the elusive certificate?"

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It was this level of deliberate a lie told India by Congress governments for decades!

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"In November 1946 Louis Fischer visited Moscow and met the Italian Ambassador there. Pietro Quaroni had been a lifesaver for Bose in Kabul in 1941. He remembered Bose over a dinner with Fischer at Hotel Plaza. There Ambassador Quaroni gave out his own assessment that “it is possible that Bose is alive”. Fischer’s note of the meeting, also kept at the library, says that “Q says that B might have been on his way to China and might have got there but did not want the British to look for him so the false rumor of his death was circulated. Q says Bose may be biding his time for a return to India.” [81]

"As the 1940s closed, the controversy about Bose’s reported death remained alive as a strong undercurrent. The spectre of Bose’s coming back from the dead still troubled the establishment. Many in India today will deny this fact out of ignorance, prejudice or conceit. “I know it all…I never heard of it...It is completely baseless,” that sort of thing.

"To those with an inflated sense of importance, here is something to ponder over. True or false, the whispers of Bose being alive were loud enough to be heard by the Central Intelligence Agency. In November 1950, a highly-placed agent in India reported that “it is now currently rumoured in the Delhi area that the ‘Netaji’, which is Bose’s nickname, is alive and is in Siberia, where he is waiting for a chance to make a big comeback”. [82]

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April 10, 2022 - April 11, 2022.

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2. Big brother watching

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"It was a new day in newly independent India. Two men walked briskly amid a green oasis dotted with magnificent old tombs of certain forgotten Delhi kings. This was Lady Willingdon Park, one of the Raj’s gifts to the capital city, an English-style landscaped garden that is now called the Lodi Gardens. On the curvy walkway the older of the two was panting from exertion, and the younger from excitement. Journalist Harin Shah was getting to share his experience of a lifetime with Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel. By the time they went around the park, Shah had brought a turnabout in the Government of India’s position on Subhas Bose’s reported death.

"From now on, Patel would never revert to those uneasy sounding, cryptic one-liners. Is Bose dead or alive? What does the evidence with the Government say, Ahmed Jaffer asked Patel on 3 October 1946 in the Council of States. “No,” Patel replied. Mangal Singh intervened and asked if the Interim Government had made any inquiry whether Subhas Bose was dead or not. “No,” Patel said, adding unhelpfully, “Government are not in a position to make any authoritative statement on the subject.” Mangal Singh would not let the Sardar go that easily: “A few days ago the hon’ble Leader of the House [Jawaharlal Nehru] made a statement that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is dead. Is that the view of the Government of India or his personal view?”

“The Government of India have no view, either way,” Patel yielded.

"Thanks to Shah, the Government came to have a clear view. In December 1949 Patel would announce that certain inquiries “pointed to the conclusion that Subhas Bose died in an air crash”. [1]"

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Author gives details of investigation by Harin Shah, who flew to Taipei and interviewed witnesses, but did not publish his findings, although he did fly to Nanking and discuss them with the Indian Ambassador, who did send in a report.

Author describes the questions in Parliament and state assemblies.

" ... A 1952 file noting mentioned with a sneer that “questions on Shri Subhas Chandra Bose’s death are asked in Parliament practically every session!” The authorities had in fact been successful in muzzling quite a few of them. An October 1952 Lok Sabha record listed questions disallowed and withdrawn. “Inquiry about death of Netaji” figured along with the sensitive questions on Geneva Conference on Kashmir, Churchill’s reference to Mahatma Gandhi’s fast, shrines and temples in India, Pakistan, oppression of Hindus in East Bengal etc."

................................................................................................

"Ayer went on to weave an account of Bose’s death on the basis of his talks with former Japanese military officers and others. Japanese-speaking Ramamurti acted as the interpreter and an old written statement of Habibur Rahman’s came handy. On his return to India in June, Ayer somehow met Harin Shah and collected his papers. He kept his findings to himself until he met the Prime Minister in September with a stack of papers containing the material he had gathered. The Prime Minister, who was also the External Affairs Minister, asked Ayer to “write out a full report about this”. Foreign Secretary Subimal Dutt was directed to go through the papers submitted by Ayer.

"Dutt scanned the records and something caught his eyes. Ayer had been able to locate a hitherto unknown statement of Habibur Rahman with “significant reference to ‘Bose’s intention’ to get out of the plane at Dairen” in Manchuria. There was also a mention of “the intention of the Japanese authorities to let him cross over to the Russian-held territory”. Dutt found it politically explosive.

"Habibur Rahman’s is the really important evidence, and those who still cherish the belief that Netajl Bose is alive and is somewhere in Russian-held territory, will seize upon any piece of evidence in support of their theory."

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"As the news of Ayer’s furtive enquiry became public, his former colleagues and Bose’s followers convulsed with rage. Bose’s nephew Aurobindo told mediapersons on March 6 that Ayer’s report was a prelude to bringing his uncle's assumed ashes to India and end the controversy. ... "

"In March 1953 Debnath Das, who was living in Thailand, came out with his own report as the ex-general secretary of the Indian Independence League. Explaining his long silence, he wrote that “some allowance” had to be made for “Japan’s extremely delicate position”, “war criminals’ trials”, “other international complications” and “the disguised hostility of the powers that be in India towards Netaji”. Das rued the “complete disintegration of the INA”, “beggarly conditions” of its veterans and “somersault of some of our colleagues”—which was a swipe at SA Ayer, JK Bhonsle, AM Sahay and others who had taken up plump government positions. Ayer came in for further attack over his enquiry."

"Significantly, Das recalled the Japanese themselves telling him that the announcement of air crash was a smokescreen.

"On the 26th August just a week after the reported death of Netaji, the chief of Japanese military intelligence department met me at Hanoi together with a military officer from Towloon—the seat of Marshal Terauchi’s headquarters and told me: “Netaji no hikoki ochiru kotown shinio shimasan….” Don’t believe the plane crash as a real crash…."

................................................................................................

" ... Ayer’s complete report. The report that the PM had tabled in Parliament was a sanitised version of the original. Expunged from it—in deference to Subimal Dutt’s advice—was the portion where Ayer had referred to a secret, high-level Japanese plan to “drop Netaji and General Shidei at Dairen” in Manchuira.

"The intention was that General Shidei would look after Netaji in Dairen as long he remained there. Then Netaji would disappear with a view to crossing over to Russian-held territory and thereafter the Japanese would announce to the world that Netaji had disappeared.

"The more disturbing part was that the Prime Minister completely hid from the nation an explanatory handwritten note on the plan as narrated to Ayer by Colonel Tada, the former staff officer of Terauchi’s HQ who was party to working out Bose’s last known movement."

" ... As early as October 1945, Finney had emphasised the need to trace Tada. In March 1946, Mck Wright was told by Major Young that “our only worthwhile move is to get hold of Tada”.

"What Tada told Ayer in 1951, and what Ayer conveyed to Nehru in the handwritten note, proved that the intelligence about deception was right. Tada let out to Ayer that all the Japanese manoeuvrings in August 1945 were directed at sending Subhas Bose to the Russians. In his secret note—which doesn’t exist any longer officially—Ayer mentioned that Tada “filled certain important gap” in his information ... "

" ... . A plane was leaving for Diren and to Tokyo, Gen Shidei who had been ordered to proceed forthwith to Diren to take charge as Vice-Chief of Staff was going by that plane. Netaji could take the only seat they could spare and Gen Shidei would look after Netaji up to Diren. Thereafter Netaji would fall back on his own resources to contact the Russians....

"Japanese would announce to the world that Netaji on his way to Japan had disappeared from Diren. That would absolve them of all responsibility for the safety of Netaji’s person in the eyes of the Allies. ... "

" ... Tada slipped out and successfully evaded the Allied dragnet. He died prematurely in September 1951, around the same time Ayer’s report reached the PM."

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" ... When the Renkoji temple priest decided to hold first memorial service to mark ten years of Bose’s reported death, Indian Ambassador BR Sen scrambled to reach the South Block. His 26 July 1955 telegram began with the ritualistic, politically right phrase “late Subhas Chandra Bose”, which every top government official recited in those days."

"The services were held and in attendance was AK Dar, First Secretary at the Embassy, who had been taking keen interest in the Bose matter.

"Either by coincidence or some unknown design, Bose’s fate became a hot topic both in Japan and India in the September of 1955. Renkoji temple priest’s decision to hold second memorial service for Bose on September 18 as per a Japanese custom and the Japanese government’s September 17 offer to send the ashes to India sparked off a huge controversy. The Indians in Japan demanded a full-fledged investigation into the death as well as missing INA treasure."

"To further counter the conspiracy theory about Bose’s “murder” the officers were compelled to jettison the original Domei claim that Bose had died enroute to a trip to Tokyo. The Japanese finally accepted what the British intelligence had uncovered in 1945:

"According to the former army men quoted by Kyodo, Bose was being transported from Singapore to Russia to escape prosecution by the Allies. A Lt Gen Shidei, a Russian expert who was being transferred to the Manchurian theatre, was to see that Bose got to the Soviets. [17]

"Totally blind to the revelation about Russia, the Indian embassy saw the Japanese government hand behind the blitz. Dar noted on September 20 that “the Gaimusho [Japanese foreign ministry] are interested in having the ashes sent to India in order to close the still lurking suspicion in their mind that the Indians somehow hold the Imperial Japanese Government responsible for some negligence in not safeguarding the life of Netaji and the property of the INA which he was carrying”. On September 22, he sent a long telegram to New Delhi. “We suspect that Japanese are somehow anxious for transfer of the ashes and have therefore encouraged controversial publicity now.”

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" ... It was a showdown in Kolkata on 6 September 1955 at a meeting of Netaji memorial committee, attended by the Red Fort trial hero Shah Nawaz Khan. Now a pucca Congressman, Shah Nawaz himself inadvertently triggered a backlash against the Government by telling the gathering that the Prime Minister was not ready for any official probe. It resulted in the adoptation of a resolution envisioning a public-funded inquiry into the mystery.

"If it had come into being, this civil society-led unofficial committee would have had for its head Justice Radha Binod Pal, the only Asian judge at the Tokyo war crimes trials. Pal’s pro-Japan judgment had been banned by the miffed Allies. Nevertheless, the Indian to occupy the highest position in Japanese esteem thereafter would be Pal. The judge already had some idea about the Bose death issue. He had been dramatically informed by a fellow American judge that the Taipei crash was “possibly a myth”. Pal discussed it publicly more than once. Writing to Japan-based freedom fighter AM Nair in 1953, he had rooted for a proper inquiry: “The whole thing demands a thorough investigation. Statements by individuals made here and there will not convince me as to the truth of the story given out. I have reasons to doubt its correctness.”

"In pursuance of the Kolkata resolution, Shah Nawaz Khan met Subhas’s eldest surviving brother Suresh Bose. Sarat had passed away in 1950. Shah Nawaz said he would take up the issue with the Prime Minister and seek official support for the civil society committee. He promised to be back soon with the plan of holding a big meeting of Bose’s supporters.

"He never did. Shah Nawaz was never seen again by the side of those who doubted the crash theory. The man who had once told a friend that a senior Japanese officer had confidentially told him not to worry about Bose as he was “safe”, gone to the other side. Several years later, a note in a Rajiv Gandhi-era file by Pulok Chatterji—the Principal Private Secretary to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh at present—gave a testimonial to this incredible change of heart. “Shah Nawaz had himself declared on several occasions that Netaji is alive.”"

................................................................................................

Author talks about the then PM of India, after years of firm statements about no need of enquiry, setting up a commission with Netaji’s associate Shah Nawaz Khan at head, but firmly guided by Government of India.

"Amiya’s inclusion would have been disastrous for the Government. This fiery, London-educated barrister would have been of far greater nuisance to them than his sexagenarian, mild-mannered uncle turned out to be."

"The best person to clarify the matter pertaining to Bose’s plan about Russia would have been Foreign Minister Shigemitsu. With so many people and records referring to him, it was in the fitness of things to invite him to give evidence to the committee probing the fate of a man he had regarded as a friend. ... "

He wasn't.

"The Japanese clearly went out of the way to support the official view. Shutting down his clinic for several days was too big a gesture for Bose by Dr Yoshimi, who had never known him. His only association with the severely burnt man identified to him as “His Excellency Chandra Bose” began and ended on 18 August 1945. And yet, the doctor became overtly mushy while describing the final moments of “Bose”. The report says that “describing this poignant scene before the committee, Dr Yoshimi himself broke down and sobbed audibly”. [22]"

"Pakistan government official Habibur Rahman’s deposition before the committee in New Delhi marked his first and last appearance in India since Partition. ... "

"Something was terribly wrong with Habib’s statement. This was not a sort of discrepancy which could be glossed over, but it was. The NIC report admitted that “some witnesses, like Lt Col Nonogaki, have stated that the plane crashed on the concrete runway; on the other extreme, Col Habibur Rahman has said that the crash took place one or two miles outside the aerodrome” and then placed its faith in the version of ground engineer Capt Nakamura, who said that “the plane crashed about 100 meters beyond the concrete runway”. [23]

"But when the same Capt Nakamura was found to be making a statement about his rescuing Bose while Rahman watched from afar—something that wouldn’t fit in the official narrative of the death story—the report brazened it out that it “may perhaps be put down to confused recollection after such a lapse of time”. [24]"

................................................................................................

Author lists further discrepancies in statements of various witnesses, from plane splitting or not onwards, to who helped Netaji, whether pilot and co-pilot died on spot or in hospital, whether Netaji was given blood transfusion, time of death, whether Japanese officers came before or after he passed away, and more.

"* One would have at least expected a formal inquiry into the air crash, which is more or less a routine matter. More so, as the plane carried distinguished persons like Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Lt Gen Shidei. But no such inquiry was held. [Pp 43-44]

"* For reasons not very clear, the Japanese authorities maintained a great deal of secrecy about it. [P 30]

"* J Nakamura says that the news about Netaji’s death was kept a secret and known only to high-ranking military officers. [P 31]"

................................................................................................

"On 1 April 1955—day one of the committee’s work—Subhas Bose’s friend and Forward Bloc leader Muthuramalingam Thevar appeared as the witness No 1. His arguments sent Suresh Bose and the Government on a collision course. Thevar charged that the terms of reference of the committee reflected a foregone conclusion. He gave Shah Nawaz a piece of his mind and then held a press conference in Delhi on April 3. Making a most unbelievable claim that he had met Bose in China recently, Thevar told the media that “he would furnish conclusive proof” that Bose was alive if the inquiry committee was reconstituted. Thevar called the committee “an eyewash”, when it had barely started functioning. “Dr Radha Binod Pal should be invited to function as the chairman. The Government must make it known categorically to the public whether Netaji’s name is still in the list of war criminals and if not, when it was removed and how?”"

Author describes how PM heard out in patience when Suresh Bose met him to say that Dr Pal ought to have headed the committee, but noted down his objection mentioning that US wouldn't have liked it! This was affirmed despite a message to the contrary from Ambassador B. R. Sen from Tokyo.

................................................................................................

Author repeatedly mentions TN Kaul in the context of government control over Shah Nawaz Khan committee. Would this be a vote relative of the PM? Shiela Kaul, another high level government member, was referred to as Mami; was TN Kaul Mama, or a cousin? Not according to Wikipedia which mentions no such specifics, although wiki dies mention such a close relationship for Sheila Kaul; but it's not conclusively absence of relationship for TN Kaul, for whom Wikipedia mentions a horrific diatribe against him at length from Moynihan, against his appointment as ambassador to US, calling him various unpleasant names because he was a Kashmir Brahman, which all amounts rather to expose - Moynihan in particular, and US in general - as their having expected a slavelike servility from India.

................................................................................................

Author describes how, according to Suresh Chandra Bose, the other two behaved underhanded way, to bring the report to an already foregone conclusion agreeing with the government positions on all points, and took his signature on notes only to brandish them as proof of his concurrence, then branding his minority report and disagreement as sudden inexplicable reverse.

Author describes, with details, the subsequent shoddy treatment meted out yo Suresh Chandra Bose, who was asked to leave committee office and Delhi, not given access to documents, demanded hus report submission in two days, and even offered bribe, first via a nephew through the Bengal CM, then directly by the CM confronting him, and offering a governorship.

................................................................................................

"On September 11, a reassured Prime Minister placed the report before Parliament. Newspapers the world over carried the news prominently the next day. “Anti-British Indian dead, inquiry finds,” was the New York Times headline. At home, the Hindu lead story was: “Death of Netaji established: Overwhelming evidence obtained.” In the Rajya Sabha, the Prime Minister adroitly fended off the few discontented lawmakers. “Mr Nehru said the Government felt that the evidence put forth in the report was adequate and no reasonable person who read it could come to any other conclusion. If a person had an unreasonable mind, it was difficult to reason with him.”

"The Government also managed to block out with considerable ease the voices of criticism against the committee’s not visiting Taiwan to make local inquiries and ascertaining whether or not Bose had died there following an air crash and his body cremated. Shah Nawaz would go on to claim that

"the matter was discussed amongst the members of the committee and it was decided not to go there. It was not under any pressure from our Government…. It was decided that no useful purpose would be served by going there after such a long time. [41]"

................................................................................................

Author describes the Government reaction when Shah Nawaz Khan expressed a wish that they'd visited the site of supposed crash; He quotes a letter to him from foreign secretariat to the effect that, since India had relationship with mainland China, Taipei might obstruct any such visit and investigation!

Shah Nawaz Khan did write to government from Japan, with assurances from Japanese government that they'd smooth the way for the visit, having an amicable relationship with Formosa.

Government refused, citing same objections about Formosa being unhelpful and looking at hospital registers being the only possibility anyway.

"At the committee’s request we had approached UK High Commissioner here to get this information for us but have not had a reply yet. The Japanese Ambassador in Formosa would be in a better position to handle this matter than the British who have only a Consul."

"Kaul was proven wrong in an instant. The British proceeded expeditiously. Through their good offices they approached the Taiwanese authorities and requested for an inquiry along the line specified by the Government of India on the basis of Harin Shah’s claims."

"UK High Commission have just informed us that their Consul in Taipeh has telegraphed that Formosan authorities are willing to allow five Chinese whose names were given by committee to be examined by British Consul in the presence of Formosan officials. They are however not prepared to let them to go to Hong Kong to appear before our committee. [44]

"The Government of India did not view this as a positive development. The Taiwanese government’s decision not to let their people appear before a panel appointed by a government which did not recognise it made New Delhi smell a conspiracy. “Formosan authorities’ refusal to allow witnesses to go to Hong Kong is significant,” Kaul wrote and conjectured that “it is possible that they may possess their witnesses and make them give wrong statements which may only complicate the work of the committee. Our opinion therefore that committee should not visit Formosa is confirmed”. These thoughts were relayed to Shah Nawaz by AK Dar. ... "

Government of India suggested that British in Formosa carry out the investigation of local witnesses and registers etc. Meanwhile Japanese government was asked for their records.

" ... On June 14, Hattori informed Dar that his government was unable to trace the records sought by the Indian government despite "thorough investigations made on the files of doctors' reports, Karte and death certificates, which had been transferred from the former Taipei army hospital to…[the Ministry of Welfare in Tokyo] for custody"."

................................................................................................

"Hattori’s intriguing July 24 response must have wrinkled Dar’s head. All that the Japanese could trace was a cremation permit, which they claimed was issued for Bose in extraordinary and secretive circumstances. Dar looked at it and found nothing in it to relate with Bose. The name was someone else’s, the date of death was different, the cause of death was altogether at variance with the crash theory. The Gaimusho had in fact belied Dr Yoshimi’s tearful statement to the committee.

"On July 25 Dar sent the record provided by the Japanese to Kaul in New Delhi. He added that “the Gaimusho have mentioned verbally in addition that they have been unable to trace any further records whether in their custody or in Formosa”."

" ... The findings of official Kang Fu Chaing, who supervised all crematoria on the island, were reported back to the British High Commissioner on 4 July 1956. There was no real proof of Bose’s death. Harin Shah had evidently cooked up characters and fictitious details to make his account appear more credible. There was no evidence that a nurse by the name of Tsan Pi Sha ever worked in the hospital where Bose had reportedly died.

"A Franklin, the British Consul in Tamsui, Taiwan, reported to the Foreign Office in London on July 10 that “it will be seen that most of the witnesses the Indian authorities requested us to obtain evidence from, have either died, disappeared or know nothing”. [45] The old Japanese records said to be for Bose turned out to be for a soldier, as Hattori had already informed Dar. The Taiwanese traced the municipal bureau clerks who had met Harin Shah. Chen Chih Chi and Li Chin Qui, who were in charge of the issue of cremation permit in 1945, said: “We were not acquainted with Bose in his lifetime; it therefore follows that we could not identify him after his death.” [46]

................................................................................................

" ... Dissentient report sank, but released ripples of disbelief crashing against the Netaji Inquiry Committee report, eroding its legitimacy."

"* [Shah Nawaz] continued calling for new witnesses and examining them not with the intention of arriving at the truth, but to fill up the gaps in the evidence and for explaining and reconciling discrepant and contradictory statements that stood in the way of his coming to the conclusion that the plane had crashed and that Netaji had died.

"* The evidence does not justify the finding that the plane crash took place and that Netaji died therefrom. I, therefore, feel it my duty, not merely out of respect for Netaji, but in the national interest and in deference to truth and candour, to record my considered verdict...."

"* Taihoku was nearest to and only one stop from Dairen, without any Indian national there and very far from Saigon, which was practically the easternmost end of Netaji’s area of activities and where a large number of Indians lived. As the Japanese could not possibly announce that Netaji’s plane had met with an accident in Manchuria, so Taihoku would be the most suitable place for a plane accident.

"* If Netaji had received injuries and burns, as a result of that plane crash and had been treated in a hospital and he had actually died there and if his dead body had been cremated, the Japanese government, for warding off any calumny or treachery, that may have been suggested against them, if not for anything else, would have decidedly taken pains to maintain correct and detailed photographic records of the true incident for the satisfaction of the Indian people....

"* As Netaji did not die, his dead body was not available for being photographed."

................................................................................................

" ... On 26 November 1957 he asked Foreign Secretary Dutt to find out from then Indian Ambassador in Japan, CS Jha, about the activities of Amiya Nath Bose there. It was quite an unusual step for the democrat Prime Minister, who, according to the memoirs of his intelligence chief, was reluctant to put even the suspected foreign diplomats in New Delhi under surveillance.

"Jha replied that “Amiya Bose did not say that he had come to find out the truth about Netaji’s death but when I asked him whether he had any views on that controversial subject he merely said that there were circumstances indicating that Netaji had been preparing to leave for Russia”.

"For the Bose family there was no closure, obviously. Suresh Bose slipped into obscurity. Six years after the Shah Nawaz-Shankar Maitra report had been accepted, he got back at the Prime Minister one last time. Irked by the PM’s 7 May 1962 statement in the Lok Sabha that “the basic conclusions reached by the committee have never been seriously questioned” and that the “Government are satisfied that there is no justification on the basis of available facts for the holding of a further inquiry into the question,” Suresh Bose wrote Nehru a letter which started a gentlemanly slanging match between the two. His 12 May 1962 letter requested Nehru to furnish the proof of Subhas’s death in support of his statement.

"The PM in his reply the next day said the proof was circumstantial, not “precise and direct”:

Author gives further correspondence between PM and Bose family, former with responses that a Humphrey Appleby (of "Yes, Minister") would applaud as exemplary in being pretentious, looking down on others and saying nothing, latter having to persistently remind him that Bose family needed replies and asking specific proofs that convinced PM.

This continued, according to author, until a month before death of Jawaharlal Nehru.

................................................................................................

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April 10, 2022 - April 19, 2022.

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3. Enter the Shaulmari sadhu

................................................................................................

One has to wonder if government knew that Netaji was already in, or about to arrive into, India, was now a Sadhu, and hence put up a false one, so people get confused.

Author writes about several former associates of Netaji asserting the two being same.

................................................................................................

"On April 26 the IGP of West Bengal was informed through a secret report that one of the visitors to Shaulmari was, lo, Shah Nawaz Khan himself:

"Two persons, whose names I am unable to disclose now, showed me photographs of Shah Nawaz and Saigal, both formerly of the INA, who had recently visited the house of one Dutta in the vicinity of Shaulmari. According to them, Shri Ashrafuddin Ahmed, who was the Secretary of the BPCC when Netaji was the president of BPCC, had visited Shaulmari area recently.

"The intelligence reports continued to trickle in. Interestingly, one of the young IPS officers trying to clear the air was Nirupam Som, grandson of Subhas Bose’s elder sister. On 2 May 1962, Som—later the Police Commissioner of Kolkata—sent an account of his meeting with Satya Gupta. Nirupam was not convinced by Satya Gupta's deposition. "I must confess that he talked in a most incoherent manner and the reasons put forward by him appeared to be simply childish," he wrote. Som wondered where Saradanand had been since 1945. But Gupta "avoided this question and merely stated that he had discussed everything with Netaji and was not prepared to reveal his discussion outside"."

................................................................................................

This perswas identified as Jatin Chakravarti by those who knew him, another freedom fighter revolutionary.

................................................................................................

"A revolting view was to gain ground that the sadhu had been propped up at the Government’s behest to befuddle the public, take their attention away from the Bose mystery and to even discredit it. The biggest proponent of this school of thought was Subhas’s nephew and freedom fighter Dwijendra Nath Bose. At Shaulmari ashram, to his utter shock, Dwijendra bumped into persons no less than Director of Intelligence Bureau (DIB) BN Mullik and his officially retired deputy GK Handoo, whose one-time assignment was to catch spies. Dwijendra came to believe that

"this is being done to bewilder the people with the names of these sadhus… There are three sadhus today running in the name of Netaji. The people who propagate that these sadhus are Netajis are all financed by the Government. [4]"

"Backing this point of view was an intrepid reporter. Barun Sengupta’s own enquiries led him to believe that Shaulmari sadhu had been set up by the Intelligence Bureau."

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April 19, 2022 - April 19, 2022.

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................................................................................................

4. Shooting star Samar Guha

................................................................................................

"In November 1964 former lawmaker Dr Satyanarayan Sinha landed in Taiwan on his personal quest to uncover the truth about Subhas Bose’s reported death. Standing at the spectacular Song Shang airport, with a panoramic view of mountains on three sides and the glistening Keelung river nearby, Sinha replayed Bose’s fatal air crash in his mind.

"It was from here that the bomber had taken off, only to crash, barely able to clear the runway of then Matsuyama military aerodrome. The Shah Nawaz Committee’s report had appended pictures of the wreck provided by the Japanese. Twisted metal debris lay strewn near a hill. Sinha strained his eyes; the hills were far away from the end of the enlarged runway.

"Sinha frowned. Could the Japanese have fobbed off the Allied investigators with some old pictures from their records to convince them that a crash had taken place on 18 August 1945? He asked around. There were some who surely knew better. “Do you remember any airplane crash during the period of your service?” Pat came the answer from a former firefighter: “Yes, there was one in October 1944.” It had taken place up on a hill, he said. “Was there any other accident in August 1945?” Sinha put it specifically. “Never heard of any accident in 1945. If there was one, I could have known about it, because, we from the fire brigade are the people who rush to the site of the accident first.”[1]

"Sinha formed the opinion that the reason the committee members were not allowed to visit Taipei was that the Government of India was “afraid of the real truth about Netaji coming out”. He returned home to tell the Amrita Bazar Patrika of his discovering that no air crash had ever taken place in Taipei on 18 August 1945. In 1966 was published his book Netaji mystery, which detailed his case with plenty of bombast. Spurred by the inputs from German and even Russian sources, Sinha made a most startling claim—Bose was “in the Russian prison of Yakutsk in 1950-51”. [2]"

................................................................................................

" ... HV Kamath visiting Taiwan at the invitation of its Varanasi-educated Vice Foreign Minister Dr Sampson P Shein. Taking heed of Kamath’s request, Foreign Minister Chein Hua ordered an informal inquiry. A ministry official Kamath would remember as “Dr Lin” later briefed him that “the evidence do not confirm that Netaji or any Indian for that matter had been killed in an air crash on the 18th…. The people whom he questioned could not tell or remember any crash taking place that day.”

"Kamath held further consultations with Hua, who told him: “We have done what we can. …If your government wants to persue the matter further we will be only happy to collaborate with the Government of India in this matter.” [3] But the Government of India was not pleased with the development. Questions were raised in both the Houses of Parliament on Kamath’s finding. Each time External Affairs Minister Swaran Singh gave identical answers:

"The Government of India have no diplomatic relation with the government in Taiwan and have no connection with any investigation reportedly ordered by that government. It has been stated several times in Parliament that the Government of India have accepted the findings of the Netaji Inquiry Committee headed by Shri Shah Nawaz Khan. [4]"

................................................................................................

"A delegation of nine Indian MPs which followed Kamath to Taiwan heard Dr Lin repeat his finding. ... Dr LM Singhvi, the illustrious father of former Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi. ... Pity that the only thing he never talked about—even though there were occasions when he was supposed to—was his recollection of what Dr Lin had told the delegation about Bose’s not dying in their country. Fortunately, Mulka Govinda Reddy remembered it all and went public with it:

"Dr Lin... told us after examining all relevant records, he came to the conclusion that there was no positive evidence to show that Netaji died in that air crash. [5]"

Author mentions that when questioned in Parliament, government of India resorted to not having heard officially from government in Taipei as an excuse.

................................................................................................

" ... The year 1967 marked the rise of the big-framed, highly motivated Samar Guha.

"A former freedom fighter and chemistry professor, Guha set out the main agenda of his public life—recognition for Bose and resolution of the dispute over his death—with his maiden speech in the Lok Sabha on 3 April 1967. Guha made an issue of the absence of Bose’s portrait in the Central Hall of Parliament among those of the other makers of India. He charged that “it was not an omission but… a deliberate and calculated act on the part of the Congress government to minimise the position of Netaji and relegate him to secondary leadership in the history of national freedom”."

"With the Indira Gandhi government unwilling to consider his demands, Guha gathered like-minded persons—Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Madhu Limaye being the most prominent—in and out of Parliament and formed a “national committee”. ... On 20 December 1967, about 350 lawmakers sent a memorandum to President Zakir Hussain. ... "

"The Government’s resolve in not reopening the Bose case began to shake with the Congress party beginning to undergo the throes of a split. On 1 September 1969 LP Singh prepared another note for the Cabinet titled “Disappearance of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in 1945”."

"Government having accepted the findings of the [Shah Nawaz] committee, have taken the position that unless fresh evidence or new facts were brought to light a further inquiry was not warranted. ... …Another claim made by Dr SN Sinha that Netaji was incarcerated in Cell No 46 of the Yakutusk prison in Siberia has not been corroborated by any tangible evidence. "

"Actually, no worthwhile inquiry had been made by the Government to verify Sinha’s allegation. While there was some correspondence with the Indian embassy in Moscow, the embassy never took up the Bose issue with the Soviet government.

"The Prime Minister’s Secretariat too outlined the issue in a note along the same lines ... The note also foretold the outcome of the Cabinet deliberations:

"Any decision to order a re-inquiry would go against Government’s repeated stand in the time of three Prime Ministers, turning down such a demand. It will also have the demerit of raising an altogether new excitement over this issue which is believed to be dead except by some followers of Netaji like Samar Guha, with whom it is obviously an obsession. In the circumstances, it might not therefore be considered desirable to set up a fresh commission of inquiry into Netaji’s death. If, however, a decision is taken otherwise, the proposed commission should consist of a single judge of the Supreme Court."

Further notes opine that if necessary government could convince those demanding such action.

................................................................................................

"Indira Gandhi had misjudged the MPs’resolve. First Mulka Govinda Reddy wrote to her that the demand for a new inquiry had the support of about 2/3rd Members of Parliament. Then an attempt by the Home Minister to explain the official position to the MPs in a meeting convened on 5 December 1969 backfired.

"The Home Minister spoke first; he presented the official line to a group of MPs comprising Mulka Govinda Reddy, Samar Guha, SN Dwivedi, Balraj Madhok, SM Joshi, Amiya Nath Bose, Bakar Ali Mirza, KL Gupta, Tridib Chaudhuri, Era Sozhiyan, Shasi Bhushan and future Lok Sabha Speaker Rabi Ray. The first speaker to articulate the MPs’ views was Amiya Nath Bose. Subhas Bose’s favourite nephew actually stole the Home Minister’s thunder with his exposition of the case. He recalled that Justice Radha Binod Pal had learnt from an American colleague on the International War Crimes Tribunal in Tokyo that “the finding of the intelligence party which went from General McArthur’s headquarters was that the evidence regarding the air crash was inconclusive”.

"According to the minutes of the meeting kept in a secret file, Amiya Nath made a stunning disclosure that Alfred Wagg, the American scribe who had made on-the-spot enquiry in Taiwan in 1945, “had told Gandhiji in his presence that the photograph of the damaged aircraft which was reported to have crashed in Taihoku airport could not have been taken in Taihoku airport”.

"Amiya disclosed that “it was on the basis of conversations with this war correspondent that Gandhiji made a statement that Netaji Bose was alive”. He countered the government logic that there was no fresh evidence to warrant a further inquiry saying “there were certain materials in the custody of the Government of India which were not placed before the Shah Nawaz Committee” and, therefore, “it should be treated not so much as a question of fresh evidence, but as the need for a fresh inquiry into the evidence available”.

"The Home Minister was rendered speechless. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... As a judge, Khosla had already earned a footnote in history as the sentencing judge in the Mahatma Gandhi assassination case."

" ... He was commissioned by the Government to explain the Indian view of bloody communal riots following the partition of India. The result was Stern Reckoning, his first book, his first book, which continues to shocks readers with its graphic description of the darkest period of modern Indian history. ... Denied ceremonial send-off by the Bar, Khosla gave vent to his frustration by writing a snide newspaper article titled “The snake: A fable for grown-ups”. On target were the unassuming Advocate General of the state SM Sikri and his wife.

"Cambridge-educated Sikri asked Khosla to make amends but he refused. Then, on the advice of Attorney General of India MC Setalvad—grandfather of activist Teesta Setalvad—Sikri filed a criminal complaint against Khosla. The former judge reacted by escaping to London. It was a question of his honour, so Sikri wouldn’t give up the chase. “Eventually, Khosla did apologise publicly and the criminal complaint was withdrawn” [10] by Sikri in larger interest of the judiciary. Just the sort of conduct you would expect from a man who became the Chief Justice of India in 1971."

"For the proverbial fly in the ointment was the backdrop of a public slight Khosla had endured during his only meeting with Subhas Bose in London in the early 1920s, when both were young ICS aspirants. Young Khosla happened to be passing by when Bose was telling fellow Indian students of his decision to quit the heaven-born service. Khosla thought there was nothing unpatriotic in Indians substituting Englishmen in the service. Bose, in Khosla’s own words, gave him “a withering look of contempt”. [12] Writing in 2001, historian VN Datta commented that this experience “was bound to rankle in Khosla’s heart”. [13]"

................................................................................................

"A public spat consumed the commission’s opening session in Delhi’s Vigyan Bhawan two days later. It looked as though a post-mortem of the Netaji Inquiry Committee was underway. A grim-looking Shah Nawaz Khan—the first witness before the Khosla Commission—said he should be “hanged in public” if it was proved that he had “played a fraud on the nation”. “Yes, you are a traitor to Netaji Bose,” [14] Amiya Bose stood up and shouted. Afterwards, his equally angry uncle Suresh characterised Shah Nawaz, once so dear to him and his children, as “a shining example of an unparallelled loyalty to Nehru”. “He has been a traitor to Netaji by supporting Prime Minister Nehru in his report that Netaji had died which was clearly against the oral and documentary evidence adduced and for which he was awarded.” [15]

"In his counter-charge, Shah Nawaz told the commission that Suresh Bose had “appended a dissenting report relating to Netaji’s death, apparently ‘under family pressure’ to keep the issue alive for political reasons”. He claimed that Nehru had nothing to do with his committee’s skipping a visit to Taiwan. “The Government of India did not come in the way at all,” he averred. [16] Suresh Bose did not agree. He was quoted by the Times of India on 6 November 1970 telling the commission that Shah Nawaz had himself “told him that there was no diplomatic difficulty in visiting Taihoku, the Prime Minister, Mr Nehru, did not like it”."

" ... Three-and-a-half years later, Suresh Bose was dead and so were all hopes of a fair deal. As Khosla finalised his report, the lawyers and deponents alike were pessimistic and anticipating a repeat of 1956."

................................................................................................

Author quotes points from Khosla conclusions, where Khosla is almost abusive of not only Suresh Bose and Japanese in general, but anybody else questioning the conclusion that Netaji had died in air crash as reported, so much so, that he labels Gandhi’s statements about Netaji’s being alive as wishful thinking and sentimental.

Which is strange, considering that Gandhi had not only maneuvered and pushed aside Subhash Chandra Bose, from congress presidency to which he'd been elected twice, but subsequently barred him from position in state, and also forced Patel to step aside for Nehru when Patel was elected PM.

That same person being accused of sentimental wishful thinking about Netaji’s being alive, is height of abusive lying.

................................................................................................

"The Government approved Khosla’s findings and tabled his report in Parliament in September 1974. The Opposition MPs were furious. Samar Guha tore the copy given to him. He couldn’t take its conclusion, and he couldn’t stand its portrayal of Bose as an impractical hothead whose “entering India with Japanese assistance could only mean one thing, viz. India would become a colony or a suzerainty of Japan”. [19]"

"from the beginning they had wanted him as their tool, a pawn in their hands, who could be made to move in compliance with their plans and wishes. They had treated Rash Behari Bose and Mohan Singh in the same manner. [21]"

"Rash Behari’s nonagenarian half-Japanese daughter Tosiko Higuchi wouldn’t agree. She has never visited India, which never accorded her father the respect he deserved. Wasn’t Subhas Bose’s case much the same? Then how come GD Khosla deduced that the Japanese were treacherous in their dealings with him? Well, it was largely on the basis of a book of Shah Nawaz’s, with a foreword by Nehru! Khosla projected some of its passages demonising the Japanese as a whole."

"They had realised that Bose commanded a great deal of respect and following amongst a vast number of Indians in Southeast Asia and that he was in a position to draw upon the wealth of the richer Indians for a patriotic cause. [23]

"In alleging so, Khosla completely overlooked that not one of the Japanese witnesses who appeared before him and the 1956 committee had spoken of anything but their highest regard for Bose. Even among the Indian witnesses, with the exception of Deb Nath Das, who had come to suspect that the Japanese had killed Bose and turncoat AM Sahay, all vouched for cordial relations between the Japanese and Bose. Early in the course of the inquiry, Khosla asked Bose’s military secretary Colonel Mahboob Ahmed, then a senior MEA official, about his “assessment of the relations between Netaji and the Japanese Army on the other”. And this was the reply he got:

"There was a great deal of respect for Netaji for his personality, for his person, amongst the Japanese that we came across and his relation with the Japanese government was that of the two interests at that stage coinciding. That is to get the British out of India. [24]

"Lt Gen Fujiwara, co-founder of the INA, told the commission that “Netaji was highly respected by Japanese people”. [25] His words were echoed by the experience Shah Nawaz had as chairman of the Netaji Inquiry Committee. Following the committee’s visit to Tokyo in May 1956, he had to acknowledge in his report that “Netaji’s name was still a household word in Japan, and a great deal of interest was taken about him both by the public and the Press.” [26] There was another account which he and Khosla would have heard as well. When Bose’s name was mentioned during the Tokyo war crimes trial, Hideki Tojo and other top brass facing death sentences, stood up and bowed down in deference to their former ally’s memory. Decades thereafter many of the former “war criminals” continued to recall their association with Bose with considerable pride."

" ... Were the Japanese trying to make India a colony of theirs? In a paper on Bose, eminent historian TR Sareen—a believer in the air crash theory—observed after studying the British records that it was just a myth propagated by the colonial British to enlist support of the Indian political parties during the war. Interrogation of Japanese high officials confirmed that they had never contemplated the conquest of India."

"Japan had a terrible record with the Koreans, the Chinese and others during the World War II, but not with the Indians. Many Japanese war veterans thought of their association with the INA as a bright spot. Even the Ministry of External Affairs later came to hold the view that “India as the country of origin of Buddhism and Netaji and INA’s association with Japan during the war also invoke friendly feelings among a section of the Japanese society”."

................................................................................................

" ... The following is excerpted from the testimony of Mulka Govinda Reddy before the commission on 30 May 1972. Recalling his 1966 visit to Taiwan, Reddy—who is in his mid-90s and lives in Bangalore—said that official Dr Lin told him “and other members of the delegation that on 18th of August, no air crash appears to have occurred”.

"“Not on 18th August?” a lawyer double checked with Reddy.

"“Not on 18th August and in no air crash Netaji appears to have died.”

"“But he told you that he had collected some material?”

"“Yes, he told us he had collected very valuable material in this connection. He also told us there was one Mayor of Taipei at that time, who is still alive. He appears to have told him that no such air crash occurred on that day and that at no time Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose appears to have been involved in any air crash in Taipei.”

"“Had you any occasion to meet the Vice Foreign Minister of Formosa?”

"“Yes, we were his guests for a dinner party and he also confirmed what Dr Lin said and he assured us that the Government of Formosa will be ever ready to cooperate with the Government of India if a commission or an officer is appointed to go into this question.” [30]

"Another member of the same delegation, former MP Prakash Vir Shastri, testified that the MPs also met Taiwanese Premier Chiang Kai-shek who “said if Government of India made an inquiry, his Government would give all necessary help”. [31]"

................................................................................................

Author discusses discrepancies in testimonies of Japanese officers regarding Netaji’s crash when examined by Khosla as witnesses in Japan.

" ... When some war-hardened former army officers who saw a famous man getting burnt alive right in front of their eyes start fumbling on basic details, you know something is wrong.

"Mind you, this was not the first recollection for these people. Many had been repeatedly questioned by the Japanese and other governments, the media and the Shah Nawaz Committee over the years. ... "

Here author quotes Isoda being questioned by Khosla, but it comes across as the elderly Japanese standing up very well to bullying by Khosla, rather than Isoda being uncertain of memory; it would seem from the dialogue that either Khosla was deliberately trying to discredit Japanese in general, or lied in order to catch them fumbling. Either way, one begins to respect Isoda and his ability to withstand pressure.

"Shri Trikha: So the personal plane of Netaji was withheld from him at Saigon under orders from Field Marshal Terauchi?

"Shri Isoda: I thought so.

"Shri Trikha: And on that Netaji got disturbed?

"Shri Isoda: He was not surprised." [34]

"Despite Isoda’s evidence on record that Bose acquiesced to the change of the planes, Khosla charged in his report that the Japanese

"denied him the use of the special plane which had earlier been placed at his disposal. He was denied accommodation for his colleagues in the bomber which was to leave Saigon. Bose had bitterly complained to his colleagues of a change of plan by the Japanese. He was so angry and resentful that he was prepared to stay on and not go beyond Saigon. He mistrusted the Japanese after their ignominious defeat." [35]

"This was notwithstanding General Fujiwara’s emphatic statement to Khosla’s loaded question whether “between Netaji and other Japanese officers, was there complete trust or not?”

"Netaji was a very great man. So, there is no question of mistrust between them. [36]"

................................................................................................

"In the course of examination by GD Khosla and Balraj Trikha, Shibuya conceded that he had in fact seen no wreckage and that his superiors showed little interest even though there had been a major mishap involving an ally and the vice chief of staff of an army which was still on the battlefronts. General Ando gave Shibuya “no instructions” and Isayama was not too much concerned about either Bose or his batchmate Shidei. Shibuya said he went to the hospital soon after the crash following an instruction from Isayama.

"But Isayama’s evidence to the Shah Nawaz Committee was that “he learnt of the accident when he went to his office the next morning”. [40] Shibuya himself forgot what he had told the committee ... "

Again, author claims there's a gaping hole in testimonies of Shibuya, but it doesn’t appear that way.

Besides, a faultless account could be that of a script well memorised, while some derails could vary when attempting to recall a real event. So one has to judge whether the account is real not merely going by difference in details.

Author notes that Khosla had to tell a Japanese witness to speak from memory, because he'd noticed several of them looking at notes; but that he doesn't mention thus, and only does so in case of Suresh Bose, abusing him extensivelythroughouthis report.

"Suresh Bose died within months of his deposition, never seeing Khosla’s report running him down. “It will be seen that Suresh Chandra Bose is drawing inferences which are not warranted by the facts”. He was “at pains to enlarge upon his grievances real or imaginary”. His “testimony in the present proceedings was a long diatribe against Nehru and Shri Shah Nawaz Khan”. “The examination of Suresh Chandra Bose’s evidence is a pointless exercise.” [44] Of all the documents brought before him, the only one Khosla deemed fit to be reproduced in full in his report was the government-manipulated note of June 1956 “agreement” of Suresh Bose with the other members of the Netaji Inquiry Committee. Even after his death, Suresh Bose was maligned for daring to challenge the official stand."

................................................................................................

But further on author does point out at another witness or more, with serious discrepancies in testimony.

"A howler followed. While Kono and Nonogaki said they saw Rahman beating the fire out of Bose’s clothes following the crash, Takahashi said he “saw Mr Bose coming from the other door. ...He came out walking with his clothes on fire. I could not speak his language. I showed him by rolling on the ground how to put out the fire. Mr Bose followed me and himself rolled on the ground. I and his aide tried to put out the fire. We extinguished the fire”."

"Wordsmith Khosla crafted a long justification for all these conflicting statements."

"This extremely persuasive logic was not applicable to those who opposed the air crash story. A question was raised about the round watch Bose was seen wearing at the time of his death and the burnt square one Habibur Rahman produced in support of his claim. The exacting standards of evidence put forward by Khosla in this instance were:

"Witnesses have made totally contradictory statements about the matter of this watch. Aurobindo Bose (witness No 165), son of Suresh Chandra Bose, said that Subhas Chandra’s father had made a present of a round watch to him. Dwijendra Nath Bose (witness No 162) another nephew of Subhas Chandra Bose said: “That watch was a gift from Subhas’s mother….” [48]

"Here were two individuals recalling a six or seven decades old family lore they had most probably heard from their elders. What terribly big difference did it make whether it was the mother who had handed over the watch, or the father? The watch was a gift from Subhas’s parents, plain and simple. Whatever warranted the usage of harsh phrase “...totally contradictory” here?"

" ... two Japanese doctors who had treated “Chandra Bose” at the hospital in Taipei. Dr Yoshio Ishii and his senior Dr Teneyoshi Yoshimi. ... "

Author quotes the parts of their testimonies where there are serious discrepancies, not compatible with memory lapse of actually witnessed events over years.

"It was quite strange that previous statements of the witnesses should have been wrongly recorded because as per Khosla’s admission “a perusal of the file of the previous committee shows that almost all statements were…sent to the respective witnesses, who studied them at leisure, made corrections, signed them and then returned them to the committee”. [51]"

................................................................................................

"One witness who pleased both GD Khosla and the lawyers with his “entirely disinterested” demeanour and straight talk was Morio Takakura. “There is no reason why reliance should not be placed on his testimony,” Khosla wrote of him in his report and yet failed to fully appreciate his statements.

"In 1945, Takakura was a colonel posted at political affairs section of the Imperial Japanese Army HQ in Tokyo and was as such in the know of things. Trikha examined him on the point why Bose was “going with Lt Gen Shidei”:

"A: Because Lt Gen Shidei was on transfer to Quantung Army, as assistant chief of staff of the Quantung Army. That is why Mr Chandra Bose went with him.

"Q: Where he was bound for?

"A: Perhaps it was for Diren.

"Q: Was he an expert in Russian language?

"A: Yes, he was.

"Q: Is it true that he knew the Manchurian border very well,

"A: He was on transfer knowing fully well of the situation on the border.

"Q: Will it be correct to say that the HQ at Tokyo accepted the plan of Netaji for his going to Russia via Diren and the HQ selected Lt Gen Shidei to accompany Netaji?

"A: Yes, it is so. The HQ was aware. [52]"

"What General Shidei told me was that after Japan’s surrender if he went to Japan, the Allied forces will confront him and he will be in danger and therefore he was being taken to the Soviet Union. [53]"

"And could the Japanese have taken Bose towards Soviet Russia without resorting to some sort of subterfuge? Takakura admitted that there was some inexplicable secrecy surrounding Bose’s flight."

" ... Unless a clinching evidence of Bose’s—as well as Shidei’s—death in Taiwan was forthcoming, it could not be ruled out Bose actually went to Russia as planned. That clinching evidence in the absence of any photographs of their bodies could only be the hospital and cremation records. These were the records that CSDIC’s GD Anderson had been wanting to lay his hands on in 1946. The Government of India had tried to access the same in 1956 from the authorities in Taiwan."

................................................................................................

"On 10 May 1972 the Government informed Khosla that it would not allow him to visit Taipei because India did not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan. This made Samar Guha and other lawmakers intervene. A joint letter to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi signed by 26 of them, with Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s name on top, demanded that the commission “should be given facilities to visit Taiwan”. It was pointed out that “many Indian government officials visit Formosa every year even though India has no diplomatic relations with the island”. [55] When the Government still did not concede to their demand, Guha had to play hardball. In a private meeting with the PM, he held out a threat that he would go public with India’s intelligence links with Taiwan:

"I told Indira Gandhi that during the 1965 Indo-Pak war, the Indian government procured weapons and intelligence from Israel through the Taiwan government, and India also has trade relations with Taiwan through the Hong Kong route. I was able to collect this secret information from a representative of the Taiwan government. [56]

"Pressure tactics worked and on 11 July 1973 GD Khosla landed at the Taipei Songshan Airport, which had come up on the site of much smaller Matsuyama aerodrome. Waiting for Khosla here were Samar Guha and Sunil Krishna Gupta, Amar Prasad Chakravarty’s deputy. According to Guha’s account, he implored Khosla to contact the Taiwanese authorities only to be informed that the Ministry of External Affairs had advised the judge against it. “Why have you come over here, then? Why did you not tell us this in Delhi?” Guha protested. “Why have you come to Taipei after 27 years?” people asked Guha as he went around the Taipei city making enquiries about the reported air crash. The word spread and soon Taiwan government knew of a foreign judge on their territory, carrying out an inquiry without any notification. Had Guha-Gupta not invervened, Khosla would have been shunted out of Taiwan. [57]

"The duo did most of the ground work, helped by Pritam Singh, a former INA man who had made Taiwan his home. They obtained permission to inspect the out of bound, unused old airstrip where the Sally bomber had reportedly crashed. But more difficult was to persuade Khosla to undertake a field trip. Near the airfield, Khosla behaved rudely. He wouldn’t listen as Guha tried to impress on him that the pictures of a plane wreck furnished by the Japanese on August 19 were apparently of the debris of more than one air crash in the same area. Khosla was treating them as “inadmissible in evidence” because Habibur Rahman had not appeared before him to testify as “to what they [really] depict”."

Author describes another lie, regarding the crematorium, in reporter Harin Shah’s account, that Khosla, Guha and the others caught.

................................................................................................

"During its tour of Taiwan, the Khosla Commission examined seven individuals. Khosla referred to two of them in his report as corroborating witnesses. They had heard of an air crash and seen a coffin, which according to their Japanese superiors carried Bose’s body. Guha charged Khosla with misinterpreting and fudging the evidence. He cited the case of YR Tseng, the last witness to appear before the commission on July 17. Tseng, an engineer, said that “during war time we only knew two leaders of India, Mahatma Gandhi and Chandra Bose” and the latter often made news in Japanese newspapers. Commission’s counsel asked Tseng if he knew anything about the plane crash. Tseng—a 16-year-old school boy in 1945—said he knew of only one air crash at the alleged site of Bose’s crash, but it took place in 1944. [59]

"Responding to questions put by Bhasin and Guha, Tseng said no one was rescued from the crashed plane and he never heard of any air crash taking place three-four days after the Japanese surrender. “There was no air crash after Japan’s surrender,” he said emphatically. [60] Later he heard about Bose’s death and said the other plane crash of 1944 at the very site “was not even mentioned in the papers”.

"Guha’s version of the cross-examination has it that Khosla haggled with Tseng over the year and month of the crash. This got on the Taiwanese’s nerves and he walked out saying he would bring in the next day a dozen of his former schoolmates, all of whom had helped clear the wreckage. Guha begged Khosla that one day’s wait was worthwhile to hear out the Taiwanese. He sensed some truth in Dr Satyanarayan Sinha’s claim before the commission earlier “that this was not the photograph of the crash which they [Japanese] are saying” and that “he saw [in a newspaper] a photo of plane crash of October 1944, which was exactly similar to the photo published in the committee report”. [61] However, Khosla turned down his request. According to Guha, the judge spent the next day shopping around for a present for Indira Gandhi, whose biography he was writing at that time.

"On return to India, Guha visited the Prime Minister in New Delhi to complain about Khosla’s conduct. Sunil Gupta quietly slipped away to somewhere in Uttar Pradesh to brief a holy man. This holy man, who did not appear before anyone, was keeping an eye on the commission’s work through Gupta, his secret informer whom he would hereafter codename as “Sukrit”. He told Gupta that Khosla's inquiry was a "command performance".

"Nothing came out of Guha’s protests before the PM. “I don't know why they have done so,” she responded to Guha’s charges about the MEA’s missive to Khosla. Guha then blasted the ministry in the Lok Sabha, accusing it of sabotaging the inquiry in Taiwan."

................................................................................................

"Mukhoty specifically raised the point that if indeed Bose had died and was cremated, some documentary evidence “in the form of a history sheet or bed-head ticket containing details of Bose ailment, the treatment administered to him and the progress observed”, and a death certificate signed by the doctor attending on him “should have been forthcoming from the hospital and municipal records at Taipei”. [63] But all that had come on record pertained to the death and cremation of Japanese soldier Ichiro Okura. Khosla’s cunning counter to this was:

"Mr Mukhoty, while arguing his case, assumed, in the first place, that these documents related to Bose and were respectively his death certificate and an application for permission to cremate his dead body. But, because the details of the deceased mentioned in these two documents did not correspond to Bose, he went on to demolish his preliminary hypothesis by saying that the documents did not relate to Bose and, therefore, Bose did not die and his dead body was not cremated. ...The argument is in the nature of a non sequitur, for what does not relate to an event, cannot be used to disapprove it. It is tantamount to raising a phantom and then destroying it. [64]"

Khosla’s counter here seems witty but is garbage and a lie dressed up in verbosity of an England educated person out to do and outdo a Humphrey Appleby, viciously.

"Khosla thus concluded that the Okura records had “no evidentiary value at all” for they do not “prove or disapprove anything”. “They relate to totally different persons and not Bose at all.” [65]

"The hole in this argument was that the documents did relate to “Bose” because the Japanese government itself had vouched for them. When requested to furnish records proving Bose’s death and cremation, the Gaimusho’s Asian Affairs Bureau on 24 July 1956 informed the Embassy of India in Tokyo that they had traced the cremation permit—but it was not in name of Subhas Bose. The Japanese government’s explanation for this was that

"since the death of Mr Subhas Chandra Bose was kept strictly confidential at that time, it is believed that this cremation permit on Ichiro Okura must correspond to the case for late Mr Subhas Chandra Bose. [Emphasis mine]"

Author points at Khosla stepping over another discrepancy regarding Shidei, and conveniently abusing Japanese when it duited his thesis and found an about turn over a serious discrepancy when that suited.

"To ensure that the lawyers representing non-official parties do not get the complete picture, Khosla saw to it that they did not get access to all relevant official records. Thus the report obtained by the Government of India through the British High Commission in 1956 never came to anyone’s knowledge. The lawyers also never saw the most important pre-1947 secret intelligence reports. Khosla went to the extent of exhibiting censored records, leaving out their originals containing information not conforming to the air crash theory. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... Foreign Secretary had made an observation similar to Mukhoty’s after he saw the cremation record for Okura given to Ayer by Harin Shah. He pointed out

"that whereas according to Habibur Rahman the dead body was cremated on the 20 th August 1945, according to the municipal certificate the cremation took place at 6pm on the 22 nd August 1945. One could understand a fictitious name being used in the death certificate and in the cremation certificate, but there was no necessity of using a fictitious date of cremation. Either Habibur Rahman’s memory must have played him false or there is something wrong with the cremation certificate."

................................................................................................

Author writes about Barun Sengupta writing about Khosla’s report in Anandbazar Patrika and demolishing it'slogic, or absence thereof.

"Sengupta rebutted that if the Japanese had no respect for Bose, why was Lt Gen Isoda tailing him in his last known days? “How often during the liberation war of Bangladesh, our Lt Gen JS Arora was moving about with the acting president of Bangladesh…or their Prime Minister…?” [69] He concluded that from his analysis of the evidence advanced before the commission, “it is not at all established” that Bose had died in Taiwan. Rather, “according to a top secret plan and with the help of Japanese, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose disappeared from Saigon airport on 17th August, 1945”. [70]

"Before Khosla’s report could be discussed in Parliament, the Emergency was imposed and all leading Opposition leaders were imprisoned. Samar Guha was bundled into Rohtak jail with his friend Atal Bihari Vajpayee and giving them company were LK Advani and Devi Lal. Some 25 years hence, as Deputy Prime Minister of India, LK Advani would recall on Aaj Tak TV channel that Guha was “always talking and writing about Netaji”."

...............................................................................................

" ... Thirty years after the end of the British Raj, Her Majesty’s Government released the single biggest compendium of official documentation for the period when the news of Bose’s death was received in India. ... "

" ... On 3 August 1977, Guha moved a motion in the Lok Sabha against Khosla’s report. He quoted from the records reproduced in the latest Transfer of Power volume. On the day Bose’s death was announced by the Japanese, Sir Robert Francis Mudie, Home Member (Home Minister) sent a note to Sir Evan Meredith Jenkins, Private Secretary to Viceroy Wavell, on how to deal with Bose. ... "

"In many ways the easiest course would be to leave him [Bose] where he is and not ask for his release. He might, of course, in certain circumstances, be welcomed by the Russians. This course would raise fewest immediate political difficulties, but the security authorities consider that in certain circumstances his presence in Russia would be so dangerous as to rule it out altogether. [71]"

"Home Minister Charan Singh explained to Guha that it was quite possible that this assessment was made before the department received the death news. Guha then referred to documents created months later and doubting if Bose was indeed dead. One of these was a minute of the India and Burma committee held at 10 Downing Street under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Clement Attlee on 25 October 1945. It noted that “the only civilian renegade of importance” at that time was Subhas Bose. [72]

"Guha appealed that the Government should institute a fresh inquiry “without losing a day”. A number of MPs—from old-timer like HV Kamth to newcomer Dr Subramanian Swamy—supported the demand. ... Guha moved a substitute motion, calling for the setting up of a three-man commission with powers to “scrutinize the secret official documents in possession of the Government of India” and obtain documents from the foreign governments."

" ... In the intervening period Guha managed to overturn long-time government policy not to have Bose’s portrait in Parliament House. On 23 January 1978, President Neelam Sanjiva Reddy and Prime Minister Morarji Desai unveiled Bose’s portrait in the Central Hall, nearly thirty years after a demand was first raised by Kamath. Moved by the belated gesture, Subhas’s youngest brother Shailesh sobbed publicly. President Reddy looked at the portrait and remarked: “Netaji has come back today, though not as expected. …Some people say he is alive. I wish I could believe it so. If he is alive, let him come to us even for one day….” [73]"

Funny, that brings a lump, unexpectedly, despite a strong interest in the subject and a mind not influenced by politics of power of sixties.

................................................................................................

" ... NG Goray, Guha’s friend and India’s new High Commissioner to the UK, took up the issue of Bose’s death with the last Viceroy and the first Governor-General of India. Lord Mountbatten’s encyclopedic memories of the India of late 1940s were as fresh as ever. A litte earlier, writers Larry Collins and Dominque Lapierre had met Mountbatten at his family mansion near Southampton and were struck when he recalled, one after another, the minute details of every big and small event down to the colour of horses and the make of the lanterns on his stately coach. And whenever he needed to refresh it, he would “go down to the basement of his mansion” to consult what the writers described as “the most extraordinary personal archive ever in the possession of a single individual”. [74]

"To such a man with such a wealth of information and experience, Goray addressed his letter. He drew Mountbatten’s attention to the records in the Transfer of Power volume and beseeched him to tell the truth about Bose’s death."

"You would say: “Why rake up the past?” My answer would be: Because there is a deep suspicion in India that Sri Bose took asylum in the USSR and all this was known to you, to Nehru, and the Soviet government. But all of you preferred to observe silence, an intriguing silence, I would say, because the British did not want to pick up a quarrel with their erstwhile ally and Nehru did not want to have a rival." [76]

"When Goray wrote this letter, two official panels appointed by the Government of India had already supported the air crash theory and Lord Mountbatten could have easily taken that line. But he didn’t. He dodged the query with an evasive reply on 10 March 1978 that “there was no official record of Subhas Chandra Bose’s death in his archives”. [77]"

................................................................................................

"That March, President Neelam Sanjiva Reddy released Guha’s book, the strangely titled Netaji: Dead or alive? For the first—and last—time since Independence, a head of the state openly strayed into the uncharted politically volatile issue. “Let us see him even for one day,” [78] Reddy wished 33 years after Bose’s death and remarked that “India would make another attempt to unravel the mystery of Netaji’s death”. Urging “the USSR to cooperate with the Government of India in ascertaining the truth about Netaji”, he said he “would coax the Soviet authorities to ‘send Netaji back if he is there’”. [79]"

" ... Unlike Suresh Bose’s Dissentient report, Guha’s book proved to be a hit. The most curious part of the book, though, was a passage in the forward, where Guha had made an astonishing claim that he “possessed some significant information which indicates that Netaji is still alive”.

"Khosla did not issue any rejoinders. As a judge he was not supposed to and he had no face to. Last days of Netaji had annoyed a section of the Bose family so much that, led by Dwijedranath Bose, they filed a suit against Khosla for trying to demean Bose. In a re-run of the defamation case filed by Justice Sikri, for more than a year Khosla was literally on the run. Finally, on 1 April 1978, he, a retired high court chief justice, accepted his comeuppance in a magistrate’s court in Kolkata. For the second time in his life, he had to wriggle out of a situation of his own creation by making an unqualified apology in which he accepted that Bose was “the liberator of our Motherland”."

................................................................................................

" ... Guha met Prime Minister Morarji Desai several times and sought a formal scrapping of the Khosla Commission report. Desai chided a much younger Guha like a schoolboy. “How can I reverse the stand of previous government?” Guha continued to insist and Desai confronted him: “Why do you say that Subhas babu is alive? If he had returned to the country in 1946, he would have become all-in-all. There would have been no Nehru, none from the Nehru family.” [80] Guha had no cogent answer. He said he had not met Bose but had been informed by some “honest people with no political ambitions” that Bose was now a holy man."

Why hadn't Guha told the president just that?

"Guha wouldn’t climb down and that put Desai in a bind. The proposed inquiry—possibility of which was being looked into by Desai’s Law Minister Shanti Bhushan—would have led to parliamentary questions, incisive reports from recently unshackled media and demands for declassifying secret files. It was a new era of great expectations and the bar was high for the Janata Party government. Even the officialdom was willing to venture into the hitherto forbidden Russian angle to the Bose mystery. A note in a secret PMO file actually contemplated the scenario of Bose’s possible escape to the USSR, and even the wild assumption that he could have got out of there, as theorised by Guha."

................................................................................................

Morarji Desai didn't want a fresh inquiry, says author, and struck a bargain; he admitted in Parliament to the previous commissions being not decisive.

" ... Guha got carried away and undid it all. With the rush of adrenal, he said: For me, there is no necessity any more of fresh inquiry. I got the report quite earlier and some important information also from very responsible quarters that Netaji is alive. Today for me there is no question of indecisiveness in any way. In the name of God, I announce in this House that I know that Netaji is alive."

"A hush fell before it was replaced by shouts and sniggers. The MPs gawked and smirked and laughed. Quite naturally. But the misty-eyed Guha went on and on with his impassioned outburst no one was taking seriously.

"Naturally, my friends will ask the question, why are you not divulging his whereabouts? I am too eager, too impatient to let the country know what I know, but then I have not the freedom yet to disclose what I know. ...But this much I can say, Netaji is nowhere under duress. He is a free man. I again pray to God along with all of you so that Netaji keeps well and we get him back in our midst as early as possible."

"This went on till the time the Speaker firmly asked Guha if he was formally withdrawing his motion. As he sat down agreeing, Guha murmured, “There is no necessity of any fresh inquiry because Netaji is alive.”"

................................................................................................

" ... On 22 January 1979 at the Calcutta Press Club he flaunted a photograph and told mediapersons that “Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is alive, healthy and free”. ... "

"Guha said the picture was taken in 1978 in a temple in India and that he knew some non-political personalities who had had “the good fortune of seeing him”. [86] He claimed that the picture had already been shown to Jayaprakash Narayan, who had been “overwhelmed with an ecstatic joy”, [87] and the Lok Sabha Speaker KS Hegde. The others not named by Guha included President Reddy, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, HV Kamath and Gobinda Mukhoty."

" ... “Please don’t cross-examine me. You are at liberty to take it at my word or reject it. I am not authorised to state anything more.” [88] “Excuse me, it is not possible at the moment to disclose where he is living.” [89] “Netaji...is a yogi of the highest order.... Netaji will not go the Sri Aurobindo way...the moment Netaji appears in public, there will be a political earthquake in India,”[90] Guha avowed he possessed “a host of information” that “countrymen will know from Netaji himself when he chooses his time to disclose it”. [91]"

"Towards the end of his life, Guha, lamented that he had in his naïvety allowed himself to be trapped by his political opponents, who knew of his secret belief that Bose was alive and in India in disguise as a holy man. This was the same holy man to whom “Sukrit” had provided the dope about Khosla’s inquiry. The holy man was virtually unseen, forever holed up in a room, and had never been caught on camera by anyone in India."

................................................................................................

" ... In his 18 January 1985 order, Justice Bhargava took the Government to task for not caring “to file any reply of the writ petition and produce relevant material before this court”. The judge felt that “either because the Union of India is indifferent to this question...or the Government of India itself is not satisfied with the reports of the two commissions and, therefore, does not want to contest the writ petition which has been filed for ordering a fresh inquiry into the disappearance of Netaji”. The court directed Sharma to make his case before the Government and asked the authorities to “come to a definite conclusion”. The Government was given six months “to examine the whole matter afresh with open mind...before coming to a prima facie decision as to whether fresh commission is necessary or not”.

"A 1987 memo from the Joint Secretary (Coordination Division) in a secret file later said that no action was taken by the External Affairs Ministry because petitioner Sharma was “no longer in this world”, having died in July 1986. In the intervening one-and-a-half years, all that the Government could do was to touch base with Nand Lal telephonically."

................................................................................................

"Around the same time, in September 1985, the news of the death of the unseen holy man’s passing away in Faizabad created a stir in the state of Uttar Pradesh for he was identified as Subhas Bose by his local followers and local media. For one, the Saptahik Sahara, then edited by Subrato Roy Sahara himself, in its 24-30 November 1985 edition concluded after an intense investigation that it was “quite possible” that the holy man was Bose. Letters of Samar Guha and Sunil Gupta were found from his residence. He was the man Guha had in mind when he swore in Parliament that Bose was alive."

" ... Dr Pabitra Mohan Roy of Kolkata renewed the contact by writing to him again. ... "

" ... A copy of his 1980 Bangla book Netajeer secret service (Netaji’s secret service), which he had dedicated to the holy man, contained some snippets from his own extraordinary life. ... "

"Pabitra’s letter said that there was a conspiracy to finish off Guha’s political career. He had been given the fake picture by some deceased INA veteran’s wife and despite reservations Guha fell for it. The explanation did not stop the holy man from expelling Guha from his close circle of disciples. Guha lived in agony till his death as a forgotten man in Kolkata in 2002.

"“If he doesn’t want to come out, what can I do,” Guha bemoaned once. His book ran into many editions, the last one being in 1997. When it was re-released in 1983, Morarji Desai made a rare public appearance after his humiliating ouster as Prime Minister in 1979."

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April 19, 2022 - April 19, 2022.

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5. A proper inquiry at last

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" ... Bharat Ratna was proposed to be conferred on him. Quite possibly, the Narasimha Rao government aimed at downing two targets with one shot. ... official communication of 22 January 1992 stated that Bose was being given the award “posthumously”.

"Acceptance of the award by the Bose family would have amounted to their agreeing with the official version of his death. This in turn would have initiated the process to bring the Renkoji remains to India as Bose’s ashes. The masterstroke, however, backfired and started a different chain of events which led to the setting up of a fresh inquiry. To Bose’s followers and family members, the conferment of the Bharat Ratna merely opened old wounds. Injustices done to him, his followers and their legacy could not be whitewashed by one belated gesture. The outrage was universal and vitriolic. Articulating the family view, Dr Anita Pfaff said that her father “should have been one of the first to receive it!” [1]

"But how could Bose be assumed dead when there was no indisputable evidence for it? Raising this point was lawyer Bijan Ghosh. He prayed before the Calcutta High Court that the Government must revoke the award. Additionally, Bijan sought that the Government should account for Bose’s fate, bring him home if he is alive and if dead "furnish full particulars of...the place and manner of disposal of his mortal remains”." [2]

................................................................................................

"In October 1996, Dr Roy and her Russian journalist friend arranged a meeting between Forward Bloc leaders Chitta Basu and Jayanta Roy on one side and on the other Alexander Kolesnikov, an army veteran turned academic, from the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. In the lobby of Moscow’s President Hotel, Kolesnikov gave Basu written details of an eye-popping classified Russian record purportedly showing “the minutes of a 1946 discussion among Soviet Politburo members Voroshilov, Vyshinski, Mikoyan and Molotov. They were discussing whether Bose should be allowed to stay in the Soviet Union”. [4] Kolesnikov advised that the Indian government should seek access to the Russian archives. This idea was to become the leitmotif of Dr Roy’s big push."

" ...Strangely, Chitta Basu did not make his note public on his return to India. Maybe, like any politician, he was waiting for the right occasion. It never came. He died during a train journey in 1997. Later, a search for Kolesnikov’s note in his belongings yielded nothing."

" ... The Committee of Secretaries (CoS) comprising Cabinet, Home, Foreign, Defence, Finance Secretaries averred that

"there seems to be no scope for doubt that he died in the air crash of 18th August, 1945 at Taihoku. Government of India has already accepted this position. There is no evidence whatsoever to the contrary. If a few individuals/organisations have a different view, they seem to be guided more by sentimentality rather than by any rational consideration.""

................................................................................................

"The year 1997 incidently marked the 50th anniversary of Indian independence as well as the 100th since Bose’s birth. On January 23 Bose’s statue was unveiled in the courtyard of Parliament in the presence of Prime Minister Deve Gowda. ... "

" ... Somewhere in the background, the age-old hostility was still lurking. It came to fore the same day at a function in the Red Fort when Atal Bihari Vajpayee stood up to speak his mind. The United Front government, whose survival depended upon the Congress party, appeared to have got some inkling of what Vajpayee was going to say. The master orator could not be silenced, so his live TV speech was censored as he began dwelling on Bose’s ouster from the Congress. Discerning viewers realised in no time that there was more to the “transmission failure”. The next day, the Hindustan Times through its editorial “A Goebbels in DD” asked the Government to apologise.

"In August a self-defeating move was made by Defence Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, otherwise an admirer of Bose. His proposal to bring the Renkoji ashes to India set off another round of legal battle. It was going to be decisive this time. Ashim Kumar Ganguly pleaded before the Calcutta High Court in his writ petition that “without there being a conclusive proof” India could not accept that Bose had died in Taiwan. Chief Justice Prabha Shankar Mishra and Justice Barin Ghosh agreed and consequently directed on 7 April 1998 that “before accepting the ashes...as that of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, the Government shall obtain full particulars and evidence and satisfy itself about the genuineness of the claim”. [8]"

................................................................................................

"In April 1998 Atal Bihari Vajpayee had just begun his second innings as the Prime Minister of India. As the BJP-led government took its time to take a call, Bose’s kin, researchers and Forward Bloc leaders—Debabrata Biswas, Dr Purabi Roy, Subrata Bose, VP Saini and others—lobbied for fresh inquiry. “The findings (of a new commission) could prove damning for some senior leaders of the national movements in pre-Independence India,” [10] said Subrata, younger brother of Amiya Nath Bose, after emerging from a meeting with Home Minister LK Advani in August 1998. Mounting pressure on the Government was a Forward Bloc-sponsored resolution for a fresh inquiry in the West Bengal Assembly on 24 December 1998. Adopted unanimously, it said the people and scholars of India were still in dark and urged the Union Government to “make necessary arrangements for availability of records in and outside India”."

Author relates the various media scoffing as a fresh commission was appointed.

"That the new inquiry was a drag on public exchequer was also the message in the derisive comments from some reputed historians. “Waste of time”, Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Dr Harbans Mukhia said. “Why don’t we accept that the man is dead and that he died more than 50 years back.” [11] “Sheer waste of time and money”, historian Salil Ghosh opined. “At the end of the inquiry, the public should have the right to know about the money and time wasted.” [12] Delhi University historian Dr Sumit Sarkar thought that “any such inquiry would be a waste of time”. He felt that the subject was “so boring and unimportant” that he did “not even feel like reacting to it”. [13]"

" ... On 23 August 2001, NDTV reported a protest against the Justice Mukherjee’s inquiry in Kolkata. “The protesters say they’re sure nothing’s ever going to come out of the investigation and it’s time to stop wasting government money on it.” [14]

................................................................................................

"A year into the new commission’s inquiry, it was evident that it would throw up some surprises at least. There were a few shockers at the start. The first among these was the commission’s brush with the Government’s obsession with secrecy. In a note sent to the commission in July 2000, the PMO requested the commission not to publish the contents of the Top Secret files."

Strangely, INA captain Dr Laxmi Sehgal publicly opined that the commission was a waste, and death by air crash was real.

" ... “The matter of his disappearance has now become a myth.” She became tense when Bose mystery researcher VP Saini began putting questions to her as a deponent. Saini produced an old VHS tape containing a recording of his interview of hers eight years earlier. “Please tell us whether this is the video recording of the interview?” Saini asked her. Sehgal did not find it amusing that the tape should be played publicly on a video player brought at the venue by Saini. “Yes!” she said in a subdued tone as her visuals flickered on the TV screen.

"Saini asked Sehgal to verify if he had indeed sought her guidance “to unfold the mystery shrouding the disappearance of Netaji” and had suggested that “the reason for Netaji’s not returning to India might be that he was under arrest in Russia”. “To that, you replied that there were some comrades of yours, especially Abid Hasan, who was personal secretary of Netaji, who had a feeling for a long time that Netaji had been arrested and he was in prison in Russia. Am I correct?”

"With the tape playing before her, Sehgal had no escape route. “Yes, this is correct. I said so during the interview.” It was not a case of a slip of tongue. Throughout the recorded interview, Sehgal sounded quite positive that there was more than a good chance of Bose having been alive after August 1945. She even gave Saini what she described as a “lead”. She recalled that at the end of the WWII, she was examined by American intelligence personnel who told her that “they followed a person whose physical description answered to that of Netaji up to the Russian border”. This was a big letdown. Dr Sehgal should have shared this with the people long ago.

"In the tape she also came across as a believer in a most atrocious conspiracy theory. She referred to some alleged message of Nehru to Mountbatten that Bose “should not be allowed to return to India until the process of partition of the country was completed”. She subscribed to Saini’s theory that “there was an international conspiracy to keep Netaji out of India”, and added that “India was a party to that conspiracy”. Having said all that, she couldn't have but felt that “there should be further investigation to put a finality to the matter”. [15] Putting it other way, Dr Lakshmi Sehgal committed perjury before the Mukherjee Commission."

Would that explain the hostility that is evident in portrayal of the character based on her, as explicitly mentioned, by Shreyas Bhave in Prisoner of Yakutsk?

................................................................................................

"The inquiry of Justice Mukherjee commenced when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister and ended when Dr Manmohan Singh was gracing the top position. The difference between the two eras of these highly respected leaders was rhetorically explained to me by a commission official in this way—“During Atalji’s time we got some files, but Sardarji gave us nothing.” This sweeping demarcation got blurry many times. At the start of the inquiry itself, Justice Mukherjee felt dismayed when the government-controlled electronic media did not give publicity to the new inquiry. He had to bring it to the notice of then Information and Broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley.

"The Vajpayee government’s half-hearted assistance to the commission greatly disappointed all those who had pinned hopes on the BJP-led government. Its approach, rather dilemma, was best summed up in a report in the Pioneer. Deepak Sharma, now a reputed TV journalist, quoted a senior government official saying, “Whatever is relevant will be shown to the commission. But beyond a point, the files cannot be made public. It is too explosive.” [16] The same Atal Bihari Vajpayee who had in 1972 opposed Indira government’s decision to bar the Khosla Commission from visiting Taiwan remained passive when his own government did virtually the same to the Mukherjee Commission. While Justice Khosla’s visit to Taiwan became possible after pressure was mounted by Guha, Vajpayee and others, Justice Mukherjee’s inquiry in Taiwan followed his own efforts, with a little help from yours truly."

" ... In November 2002, the MEA was requested to “persuade the Government of Japan to get from the Government of Taiwan the original register of cremation permits for the period from 18.08.1945 to 21.08.1945”. [17] In June 2003 the MEA told the commission that no “relevant” documents are available in Taiwan. This was the same month when I beseeched the Republic of China (Taiwan) Government on behalf of all Indians to state facts about Bose’s reported death in their country. Within days, Taipei Mayor Dr Ying Jo Ma’s office responded that “according to the historical documents in Taipei city archives, there is no such record of a plane crash in Taipei on that day”.

"ROC Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Ling-San emailed me following my subsequent appeal to President Chen Shui-bian. According to the minister, a thorough analysis of the records left by the Japanese showed that there had been only one major air crash during that period. An American C-47 transporter carrying about 26 released POWs had crashed near Mount Trident in Taitung area around 200 nautical miles away from Taipei. That was in September 1945. There was “no evidence” to show that any plane carrying Subhas Bose had ever crashed in or around Taipei between August 14 and October 25 of 1945.

"I immediately informed the commission and advised its officials to contact the Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre in New Delhi. One official complained bitterly that the Government had not even bothered to tell them that such an office existed in the national capital."

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Author relates MEA writing to Japan and being told that the documents asked for, cremation related, weren't found; about MEA informing the commission that India had no diplomatic ties with Taipei, even as a newspaper abroad reported there were defence related ties; and MEA being miffed at the commission for directly approaching Taipei.

Author relates the subterfuge, delays and shoddy excuses that Justice Mukherjee had to meet, but he prevailed, and did visit Taipei.

"It hadn’t taken Justice Mukherjee long, given his vast experience, that tracing of the death and cremation records was the most vital aspect of the inquiry. He reviewed some, not all, of the pre-1947 intelligence reports and yet arrived at a view which would have pleased Colonel GD Anderson:

"Reports of those inquiries indicate that they based their findings relying solely upon the oral testimony of some witnesses without caring to search for the relevant records of Taihoku airport, the army hospital, Taipei Municipal Bureau of Health and Hygiene and Taipei city crematorium to test the veracity of their assertion and, in case no such record was found, to incorporate that fact in their respective reports. [28]"

"Fulfilling the promise made by Hsu to Justice Mukherjee, the Taiwan government provided the commission the holy grail of Bose mystery: The 1945 vintage cremation register from the old crematorium of Taipei city. The record was quite comprehensive and meticulous, as you would expect Japanese records to be. Running into 25 big-sized pages, it listed details of about 273 persons—Japanese, Chinese, British—cremated or buried in Taihoku in between 17 and 27 August 1945.

"A minute study of the record carried out by an expert recommended by the Japanese consulate in Kolkata showed that neither Subhas Bose, nor General Shidei, nor pilot Warrant Officer Aoyagi, nor associate pilot Major Takizawa had been cremated in Taipei during this period. An entry in the name of Ichiro Okura was very much there incontestably proving his death. Habibur Rahman and the Japanese had obviously been untruthful when they spoke of the cremation of the air crash victims in Taipei. No plane crashed and there was no cremation of the people who supposedly lost their lives as a result of it. The official theory now stood turned on its head."

"Justice Mukherjee was constrained to deduce that “Dr Yoshimi’s failure to give any reason, much less a satisfactory one, for belated preparation of the copy [of the death certificate]...clearly indicate that the above document cannot but be a manufactured one”. [30] And since the manufactured 1988 certificate reached Joychandra Singh, a researcher and activist assisting the Government of India in proving the Taipei death story, it is not too difficult to guess the motive behind the fabrication."

................................................................................................

" ... I approached former union ministers Murli Manohar Joshi and George Fernandes. Battling the Alzheimer’s disease, the socialist warhorse was unable to do as much as he could have. It was erudite Dr Joshi who made the Government extend the commission’s tenure to enable it to visit Russia. “Why didn’t you come to me earlier?” he asked me in our first meeting. He clarified that as the HRD Minister he was not in the loop when the matter was handled by the NDA government. He met former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and discussed the issue. I don’t know what exactly transpired between them, but apparently the former Prime Minister backed whatever Dr Joshi did afterwards. He met Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Home Minister Patil and pressed that national interest warranted the inquiry to continue. ... "

"While this happened, I made a desperate bid to draw the Supreme Court’s notice to the case through a writ petition. It was dismissed on 6 May 2005 by the Bench of Chief Justice RC Lahoti and Justices DM Dharmadhikari and GP Mathur. ... "

"I may have goofed up with my petition, my counsel may not have argued properly, but I do feel that the honourable court showed little deference while handling such a matter of national importance. How could the apex court take an unemotional approach towards Netaji’s fate when it is known to empathise and show touching concern in matters relating to even those who have been a menace to the society? The Supreme Court recently frowned upon illegal killing of a Naxal, commenting that “our Republic can not behave like this and kill its own children”. [32] This Republic would not have come into existence but for Subhas Chandra Bose. ... "

"The commission’s much-awaited Russian visit took place from 20 to 30 September 2005. Joining Justice Mukherjee there were some deponents, including Dr Purabi Roy, and the Pioneer senior editor Udayan Namboodiri. According to the commission report, it “visited some archives located in Moscow, Omsk, Irkutsk and St Petersburg as could be arranged by the Indian Embassy in Moscow in collaboration with the Russian government. The commission could not get any opportunity to visit the Central Archives of FSB (KGB) and the President’s Archives of the Russian Federation”. [34]"

Or Yakutsk?

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" ... But if Bose had come incognito, or been assigned a pseudonym, no record was expected to be found. A classic chicken and egg situation that is: You can’t get the records unless you have the assigned name, and you can’t get the assigned name unless you have the records.

"Namboodiri reported that wherever Justice Mukherjee went, "he was told by responsible officials that evidence, if any, of Netaji's sojourn in Stalinist Russia, can only be found in some 'centralised' place. By 'centralized' they mean Lubayanka". That is the HQ of former KGB. The commission's 10-day tour produced "nothing except exasperation", Namboodiri, who had been following the Bose case for years, commented. “It was nyet, nyet and nyet all through. Yet, one fact that cannot be denied anymore is this: The Russians are certainly hiding something.” [35]"

"Dr Purabi Roy later said that the Russians had “turned hostile” under official pressure. I agreed with her stance for the most part, except that at times she went a little overboard with her suspicion-fuelled belief that Bose met his end in the USSR. Examination of Prof EN Komorov of the Institute of Oriental Studies was quite enlightening on this aspect. He told the commission that probably it was Dr Roy and not him who had remarked during their previous conversation that “let’s take it this way, he [Netaji] was here and he died here”.

"What I actually told Dr Roy was what would have probably happened to Netaji if he were here in 1945. Prominent political leaders who were given asylum in the USSR were treated well by the Russians, like Sukarno…. Soviet leaders did not like Nehru. Stalin might have taken interest in Subhas. [39]

"But indeed something was fishy about the Russian witnesses. Komorov left without signing the record of his examination. The commission also noted that “Mr Yuri Kuznets declined to depose before the commission. Mr Kolesnikov, another witness, could be ultimately traced by the Indian embassy only after the commission reached Moscow. He, however, could not be made available for his examination since he was reportedly posted in Turkey”. [40] Alexander Kolesnikov was the same person who had claimed to have seen a record showing Bose’s presence in the USSR in 1946. The commission kept reminding the Government for months and months to trace him. One needn’t have Udayan’s experience as a journalist to question how was “it possible for any citizen of a country, leave alone a diplomat, to be untraceable?” [41]"

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Author extolls report of Justice Mukherjee. He gives its reasoning and conclusions.

"* Netaji could not have thought of taking decision to escape—not to speak of translating that thought into action—without the active support and cooperation of the Japanese military authorities.

"* The death of Ichiro Okura [a Japanese soldier] owing to heart failure on August 19, 1945 and his cremation on August 22, 1945 on the basis of a permit issued on the previous day were passed off as those of Netaji.

"* The very fact that the Japanese army authorities wanted to pass off the death and cremation of Ichiro Okura as those of Netaji is an eloquent proof of their ensuring Netaji’s safe passage by creating a smokescreen.

"* Obviously, in cooking up the story of Netaji’s death in the plane crash and giving it a modicum of truth they (the Japanese military authorities and Habibur Rahman) had no other alternative than resorting to suppression of facts and in doing so they not only invited material contradictions in their evidence...but also left latent loopholes which have now been discovered.

"* Lest the identity of the dead body of Ichiro Okura should have been discovered by the Bureau people who were not likely to be party to the escape plan, the Japanese army officers resorted to various precautionary measures at the time when the dead body of Ichiro Okura was brought to the Bureau for regulatory inspection…. That Habibur Rahman was also a party to the escape plan is evidenced by the prominent role he played in ensuring that the Bureau people could be misled in believing that the body which was going to be cremated was that of Netaji.

"* The very fact that the Japanese Buddhist custom, viz. preservation of the dead body for three days before cremation which fits in the Ichiro Okura’s death on the 19th and his cremation three days thereafter, i.e. on the 22nd, and picking up of bones from every portion of the body after the cremation and keeping the same with the ashes was adhered to is another circumstance which indicates that the body cremated and the mortal remains taken there from were of Ichiro Okura and not Netaji.

"* The eloquent proof of Habibur Rahman’s role in the escape plan and also the manner in which he wanted to execute the same is furnished by the fact that he ensured the photographing of the dead body minus the face.

"* If this evidence of Habibur Rahman [that the plane nosedived from a fairly high altitude] is to be believed, then none of the 12/13 passengers—not to speak of the crew members—could have survived. Viewed in that context the explanation sought to be given by the surviving occupants of the ill-fated plane that as Netaji was sitting by the side of the petrol tank, gasoline flashed all over his body resulting in his sustaining third-degree burns cannot also be believed, for Netaji could not have been in his original position on the floor immediately following the plane’s nosediving."

" ... The question whether Netaji thereafter landed in Russia or elsewhere cannot be answered for dearth of evidence. [42]"

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"Compared to Desai, the other prime ministers have either remained mum or made equivocal statements. Prime Minister Nehru after making repeated claims in favour of air crash version—such as that there was overwhelming evidence for it—had to concede in 1962 that there was “no direct and precise proof” to back it. During his official visit to Renkoji temple, Prime Minister Vajpayee described it as a place holding Netaji’s smiritya (memories), avoiding the Hindi word asthiya (mortal remains). There is no known statement of any other Prime Minister—from Lal Bahadur Shastri to Dr Manmohan Singh—so precise as that of Desai’s."

"The Forward Bloc counsel, Keshab Bhattacherjee, pointed out that throughout the inquiry the Government never opposed "the averments made in several affidavits wherein specific statements are made to the effect that there was no plane crash". He submitted that in absence of any government affidavit opposing such claims, it was obvious that such statements were "deemed to have been admitted by the Union of India".

"But after the Mukherjee Commission report was submitted with the conclusion that rather than dying in Taipei, Bose appeared to have escaped toward the USSR, the Government did a 180. In a somersault that can only be inspired by political considerations, Home Minister Shivraj Patil said the Government was reverting to the findings of previous inquiries set up during the Congress rule."

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"How could the so-called eyewitnesses, for example, ever forget for the rest of their lives the dramatic sequence of Subhas Bose coming out of the plane wrapped in fire and one of them risking his life to try and rescue him. Who was the one? Rahamn said he tried to save Netaji; Major Takahashi said no, he did it; Nonogaki said he and Rahman together did their best and Nakamura insisted the credit went to him alone. If four people claiming to have witnessed one major event of history give out four different versions, only a kangaroo court will give their account any credence.

"The contradictions will pile up if one sits down to study the 21 volumes which contain the record of oral evidence tendered before the Khosla Commission. But where do you get them? The Ministry of Home Affairs held them close to its chest as a “Secret” record till the last year when Chandrachur Ghose and I snatched them away at the end of a long-drawn RTI tug of war. The volumes are still not available in any archive. They were given to the Mukherjee Commission after considerable delay so that, I suspect, the commission could not subject them to minute analysis and discover a whole range of anomalies."

" ... Rudra Jyoti Bhattacharjee referred to a court ruling which said that in case of contradictions in oral evidence, the court should look for documentary evidence. That’s why Justice Mukherjee cross-checked the veracity of oral evidence by searching for supporting documents of Bose’s alleged death in Taiwan. It is shocking that the Government should now find fault with this approach of the former Supreme Court judge, conveniently overlooking that from day one this was also the government approach."

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"In 1951, Dr BV Keskar, the Deputy Minister for External Affairs, recalled in Parliament a 1946 statement of Prime Minister Nehru that Bose had died and the main proof of it was a death certificate issued in Taiwan.

"This conclusion, said Dr Keskar, had been confirmed from reports received from the Japanese government and their agencies and in particular by a statement of a medical officer of the Japanese army who stated that he had made out a death certificate, the cause of death being extensive burns and shock. [45]

"Five years later, the same ministry, which was headed by Nehru, approached the British High Commission over the inquiry of Shah Nawaz. It made a specific request for procuring Bose’s death and cremation records from Taiwan."

"If any of papers listed below are available Indians should be grateful for relevant extracts (four copies) with certified English translations both being authenticated by HM Consul:-

"(A) Doctor’s report on Bose’s death at Nanmon Hospital circa 18th August 1945;

"(B) Police report on death;

"(C) Cremation permit issued by Bureau circa 20th August 1945. [47]"

"Justice Mukherjee did exactly what the British investigators wanted to in 1946 and the Government of India did in 1956. And all he got was Ichiro Okura’s death certificate and his name on the cremation permit. Would Anderson have been satisfied that it was “the final and positive proof”?

"Our government should have been grateful to Justice Mukherjee for cracking the mystery. But the PMO and MHA’s joint affidavit of 2007 made outdated, atrocious arguments. The excuse for the non-availability of any record with Bose’s name on it was that “it was a war time and the Japanese surrendered to the Allied forces and as such, either no records were there or whatever records were there might have been destroyed, particularly when the Japanese were in control of Formosa up to 25th October, 1945”.

"The unstated motivation behind the reference to “war time” was GD Khosla’s spin that in the “chaotic conditions” of August 1945 the Japanese lost their bearings and did not carry out even the basic routine jobs. By peddling this line further, the Government of India extrapolated to Japan and its people something which is the hallmark of everyday life in the third world nations, where people go berserk on the arrival of a train at platform."

" ... How would the Government of India classify the documents relating to Ichiro Okura’s death and cremation if not as “records”? When the records for an ordinary solider like Okura could be created in August 1945, what stopped the Japanese from creating those for Bose and Shidei?

"The conjecture that “whatever records were there might have been destroyed” has nothing to stand on. Japan never said the records of Bose’s death and cremation were destroyed. It only insisted that they were created in the name of Ichiro Okura."

"Thus spake Pranab Mukherjee in the Lok Sabha on 18 May 2006:

"Sir, when this commission was established, the Government itself had rejected the two earlier commissions, namely the Shah Nawaz Commission [sic] and the Khosla Commission and that is why this commission was established.

"Government contention: “Justice Mukherjee Commission appointed, inter alia, in deference to the judgment of the Hon’ble Kolkata High Court, contradicted the findings of the earlier committee and commission, but did not do so convincingly and conclusively. It was, therefore, not possible to accept same.”

................................................................................................

"It is a great shame, but according to the Standard Operating Procedure adopted by the Congress-led government, anything which did not conform to its world view was not conclusive. “It took 21 years and nine commissions of inquiry for the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots to get their first token of justice” [48] in shape of the Nanavati Commission report. In August 2005, the same Government of India, the same Shivraj Patil dismissed the findings of this commission. The “action taken report” in this instance said that the commission was itself not certain of the involvement of Congress leaders in the genocide and, therefore, “any further action will not be justified”. [49] Then, the Opposition members and the people of Punjab lunged at the throats of the ruling class and there was this complete about-turn. Patil assured the lawmakers in the Lok Sabha that “all the recommendations” of the commission would be implemented by the Government “as it is”. [50] It would seem the main reason the Government got away with the blatant dismissal of the Mukherjee Commission report was that the people, especially in Bengal, took it lying down."

"The Government affidavit further says: “In compliance with the direction of the Justice Mukherjee Commission, Government of India produced all the documents before the commission which were available.”

"The catch lies in the phrase "which were available". ... "

................................................................................................

"Lastly, the Government affidavit claims that the “Government of India have always acted promptly, honestly and fairly while handling a definite matter of public importance, namely, the disappearance of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in 1945”.

"I give up. Maybe I should write to the Oxford and Cambridge universities. The sense I get after checking definitions of the highlighted words in their dictionaries is not what I get when I assess how our government actually handled the issue of Subhas Bose’s fate."

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April 19, 2022 - April 20, 2022.

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6. The search for Bose files

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Author writes about experiences of his own and of others, including Mission Netaji group and Justice Mukherjee, regarding responses from officials in India vs those elsewhere, to enquiries.

It's familiar in various contexts.

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"As discussed previously, in 1956 the Ministry of External Affairs approached the British High Commission in Delhi to make an inquiry about Bose’s reported death in Taiwan. The British reverted a few days after Shah Nawaz’s report was presented to the Prime Minister that there was no real proof of it. But from that time till today not a squeak about the Taiwanese/ British inquiry has been heard in India from the government side. While filing affidavits, making statements and submissions before the Mukherjee Commission, neither the Ministry of External Affairs nor any other ministry referred to the Taiwanese/British findings as they furnished all relevant information, including details about the missing or destroyed files. It was as though the Taiwan 1956 inquiry report never existed.

"Unfortunately for the Government of India it does. Declassified by Her Majesty’s Government, the original papers can now be accessed by anyone at the National Archives in Kew. The last page in the British file clearly mentions handing over of not one but five copies of the Taiwanese report to the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi on 10 August 1956.

"That the MEA should have wished away all the five copies of a most credible report not supportive of the Government’s view about Bose’s death is an undeniable proof of highest-level conspiracy to hide facts from the people of India. Added to it is the rattling discovery by me that the Taiwanese report had been shown to Justice Khosla. And yet not a word about it is traceable in his report, which details in riveting prose all sort of absurdities with the hidden objective of turning the Bose mystery into a standing joke."

" ... Former Supreme Court judge MK Mukherjee, whom the former Home Minister rated inferior to former High Court judge GD Khosla, located the report during his visit to Great Britain and used it to bring down the air crash theory."

................................................................................................

Author writes about a file related to enquiries regarding questions, about Netaji’s being alive or not, was destroyed personally by PN Haksar in 1972, just as Khosla enquiries were on; when Samar Guha wrote to ask about it, the then PM said there were copies; when Justice Mukherjee sought the said copies, he was stalled the usual way with official verbose saying nothing responses.

"Information culled from the records of two commissions as well as the PMO records I accessed using the RTI also shows that in around 1956 a file was opened in Prime Minister’s Secretariat, as the PMO was called in those days, on the subject “Circumstances leading to the death of Shri Subhas Chandra Bose”. This file—No 12(226)/56-PM—was destroyed in 1972 along with several other irrelevant files, even though the Manual of Official Procedure in force at that time stipulated that the files of historical importance, especially those relating to issues agitating the public mind, would be kept in office for 25 years and then sent to the National Archives.

"According to unverifiable claims, this file was the master file of all Bose files—personally maintained by Prime Minister Nehru. As a Cabinet minister, Dr Subramanian Swamy had the opportunity to see the relevant papers. He stated a few years back that this “Nehru’s file” had been destroyed on the orders of PN Haksar, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Private Secretary."

" ... After he got wind of the file and its destruction, Guha wrote to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on 3 January 1974. The PM replied that the “file contained only copies of certain documents which are still available in other files” and that is why it was was destroyed."

"On receiving the above letter, the MEA lobbed it into the PMO’s court, the MHA clammed up and the PMO sent a reply which Justice Mukherjee described as “not compatible” with what had been asked for. The reply, he noted, “adduces no cogent reason for their inability to send their documents called for by the commission”. In plain English, the PMO was just waffling."

"The curious case of missing and destroyed Bose records requires some elaboration. Is it possible for the Intelligence Bureau to destroy certain records after they have been considered as evidence by the Khosla Commission? Why are the pictures of the plane wreck in Taipei—a vital “evidence” of Bose’s “death”—not to be found in the secured government vaults today? Is it because that putting them to scrutiny will help demolish the myth of the air crash? How could the Ministry of External Affairs tell the Mukherjee Commission that it can’t find “any documents of records or files relating either to the proceedings of the Shah Nawaz Committee or the exhibits/records/documents filed before it”. [4]"

Author gives the counterexample of PM Manmohan Singh presenting Musharraf on his visit with his own and his siblings' birth certificates! He discusses files classification and storage, and more.

"I do not expect anyone will say this publicly, but there are people so prejudiced, so rabidly opinionated that they would argue in private that records relating to Bose’s death and other connected matters are not worthy of preservation for it would be a “useless and wasteful exercise” for a “poor country like ours”, which has many other, far more important things to pay attention to."

................................................................................................

"The destruction of classified records too is done according to set procedures. An official just can't tear them apart and throw the parts in a bin. When a copy of a notice—just the notice—concerning a Top Secret note for the Cabinet on Bose's fate was destroyed in the 1990s in the presence of an Under Secretary from the NGO section, due care was taken to mention how it was destroyed.

"Thus, when it comes to classified records, things are as professionally managed in India as in the developed nations. The Government of India has a proper approach towards storing, moving and destroying classified files, including those concerning Subhas Bose. With that being the true state of affairs, it can be easily inferred that the disappearance and destruction of Bose-related records could only be the result of a conspiracy hatched by those within the Government.

"Moreover, I can vouch from my personal experience that the highest office in the land is still clutching several secret files on Bose close to its chest. In October 2006, I requested the Prime Minister’s Office under the RTI Act to confirm if it was holding classified records/materials on Subhas Bose, and if yes, provide me the lists of classified and unclassified files. I also enquired whether the PMO had any plan to transfer the Bose records to the National Archives. In its reply, the PMO sidestepped the issue of classified records and furnished a list of 11 unclassified files—six of which related to the disappearance controversy—and stated that “an exercise was underway to review classified files held by PMO for declassification and on declassification such files would be sent to National Archives”. If the Guinness Book of World Records has an entry for “longest-running government review of files”, here is a chance for Netaji’s admirers to get his name there."

................................................................................................

" ... While in London, thanks to House of Lords member Peter Archer, Mukherjee came to know about the existence of some classified records. In late September 2001 Archer met Alexander Irvine, the then Lord Chancellor, and briefed him about the case. According to the UK’s Public Records Act of 1958, the Keeper of Public Records, under whom the National Archives functions, is answerable to the Lord Chancellor On 1 December 2001, Irvine wrote to Archer that “all the material on Subhas Chandra Bose, previously retained by the Cabinet Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, has been passed to the Public Record Office and is open for public inspection”. He added that

"a few relevant papers from the files of the intelligence and security agencies are retained by those agencies, with my approval; however, these papers do not contain any additional information relating to Subhas Chandra Bose’s death that is not available at the Public Record Office or the British Library. They are retained as a matter of principle, because the peacetime file of intelligence and security agencies are not released, rather than because of their particular content. [8]"

................................................................................................

"Justice Mukherjee made a push for accessing Bose-related records kept in the US archives, as well as those still classified. Subsequent official contacts brought out some bright ideas from the US side. Indians run out of them when Bose is involved. On 23 June 2003, Deputy Chief of Mission Albert Thibault advised the MEA that the commission could “select an Indian scholar or a graduate working in the United States to perform such research” [12] in NARA, the world’s largest archives. Taking a cue from Thibault’s letter, the commission requested the MEA to engage some suitable scholar in the US who, either “for the love of Netaji or some enumeration”, could pick out relevant records."

" ... The ministry could have easily hired an expert researcher at the NARA as their contact details were available on the Maryland-based archive’s website. The commission repeatedly reminded the Government about finding a researcher in the US. And a wannabe superpower, would you believe, could not do this simple thing.

"The only relevant declassified records that eventually reached the commission came on the tip-off of former CBI Director SK Dutta—the seniormost former government servant ever to publicly reflect on the Bose mystery. I had the pleasure of prodding him to. Regarding the secret records in America, the MEA rested its case telling the commission that “classified documents of the US Government can be requisitioned under the US Freedom of Information Act only by giving specific details of the documents; and…this is a tardy and complicated process”. [13]

"The biggest complication was the lack of intention. A little later, I located two classified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) records sitting in Delhi with the help of Sarat Bose’s granddaughter Madhuri Bose-Gaylard. Using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), I sought copies of these two records. The agency turned the request down because the release was likely to harm the US interests. I appealed that they shouldbe released for the sake of Bose’s admirers world over, including in America, with necessary censorship of the names of agents and the method employed to collect information. The arguments that do not cut ice with our Government were accepted by the CIA. The two records were duly released and they showed that in 1950 rumours were in circulation at high levels in India that Subhas was alive, and probably in the USSR."

"A memo dated 27 February 1964 from a Deputy Director of Security to a chief of some unknown section conveyed the assessment of an informant seeking an interview with the higher-ups in Washington, DC. The informant believed that "there now exists a strong possibility that Bose is leading the rebellious group undermining the current Nehru government"."

................................................................................................

Author exposes his very westernised educational roots in the mistake here.

" ... During his examination in August 1972, the legendary Bhola Nath Mullik lived up to his name in an unexpected sense. It is a curious paradox to have your first name “Bhola”—Hindi for naïve—when you are the big daddy of spies."

"As the head of Indian intelligence, Mullik met Prime Minister Nehru virtually each day and was one of his closest confidants. Post-“retirement,” Mullik was something of a national security adviser. He finally called it quits in September 1968. Such an extraordinary man of such unrivalled experience should have known a lot, but his responses to the questions put before the commission—which are luckily on record—give impression as if Mullik had been living in a cave all the while the Bose mystery was raging in India."

Author relates about when Mullick was questioned by commission and denied everything, subsequently when some things came to light it becoming clear that this amounted to him committing perjury on oath.

"On 7 September 1963 K Ram wrote to Mullik again. This time through a Top Secret letter, asking Mullik to throw light on Shaulmari case, simple and straight. “I have just now received another letter on the same subject from one Uttam Chand Malhotra...I am sending this also to you so that you may have necessary inquiries made regarding the activities of the Shaulmari Ashram.” [18] Mullik’s reply of November 16 made five points, the last of which said:

"In his letter, Shri Malhotra has asked the Prime Minister to officially recognise the Shaulmari sadhu as Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. This claim is quite false and the Shaulmari sadhu himself does not claim any connection with Netaji. Enclosed is a copy of the English translation of the Bengali leaflet published from the Shaulmari ashram in which it has been categorically stated that Shaulmari sadhu is not Subhas Chandra Bose. This should falsify Shri Malhotra’s claim. But unfortunately, there are people in India, including some in leading positions in public life, who want to exploit Netaji’s name. They have been propagating since the last 14 years that the Netaji would return. A propaganda was even started when the Chinese invaded our country last year that Netaji was coming with the invading army. [19]"

But, author points out, mullick had denied it on oath to the commission.

"A Secret memo No 6/DG/68(6) dated 18 December 1968 from Devendra Singh, Joint Assistant Director, IB, informed the West Bengal Intelligence Branch that the baba had been in Madhya Pradesh for six months and made this strange request:

"We would be grateful if you could please trace the whereabouts of the sadhu. A note on the recent activities of the Shaulmari ashram may also kindly be sent to us.

"What sort of concern for the “security of India” could have attracted IB’s attention to Shaulmari sadhu after the controversy around him had waned away and he was running from one place to another for survival?"

................................................................................................

"Something like this was put to Atma Jayaram, who was the IB chief when he was examined by the Khosla Commission, a day after Mullik’s deposition. But like Mullik, Jayaram was of little help in clarifying the issue. The record of his testimony indicates that the IB was not being exactly cooperative. For a start, Jayaram wouldn’t give a straight answer on the Bose mystery and initially gave the line that Shaulmari episode wasn’t looked into. ... "

"“Can you say that your intelligence department has never conducted any inquiry into baba of Shaulmari Ashram?”

"“I can only talk from my memory. This subject did come up some years ago and when we use the word inquiry, not in the form of police inquiry.”

"“I am talking as a layman!”

"“Inquiries will be done by the police organisation. In this particular case by West Bengal Government and they would send their reports or pass their reports both to the Government and to us.”

"“There were certain inquiries?”

"“Certainly.”

"This partial disclosure provoked Bhasin to put to Jayaram: “When the Government of India has accepted Shah Nawaz Committee’s report that Netaji is dead then how is it that the intelligence department goes after every news when it appears that Netaji is not dead and he is alive?” Jayaram’s non-answer to this was: “Whenever any report appears it is not necessary that we should go after that. We are not directed by Government to do anything. Intelligence organisation may do on its own.” [20]"

................................................................................................

"It is my mortification to accuse the Intelligence Bureau of dissembling over a matter of utmost public importance. Not only did its serving and retired employees lie before the inquiry panels, the organisation also altered an important record to shore up evidence in favour of the air crash theory. Jayaram’s reference that “we have presented [to the commission] whatever material we have” was to a dossier of 1945-46 vintage reports, which was originally compiled and supplied to Shah Nawaz by Mullik himself. The first report in the dossier—which contained only those reports which appeared to support the air crash theory—was from PES Finney. Dated 5 September 1945, this report ran into three pages and comprised 10 points. The conclusion of the report looked like this:

"Although at this stage one cannot rule out the possibility of Bose being still alive, and of these telegrams being a part of deception plan regarding himself, (particularly in view of his previous intentions of escaping to Russia), the general impression from the study of these documents and the talk with Isoda and my informant is that Bose did actually die as stated.

* * * *

"Sd. P.E.S. Finney.

:Assistant Director,

"Intelligence Bureau, Govt. of India,

"Attached I.A.U. 7 Division

"Bangkok."

"Both Shah Nawaz and GD Khosla used this report to assert that even the wartime intelligence inquiries had concluded what they did. Khosla gladly made the report an exhibit, assigning it number 6 A. The image you have just seen is from this exhibit.

"The claim was patently false because Finney’s report of September 5 had not determined as such. The four stars at the end of the Khosla Commission exhibit No 6 A represented deletion. Khosla and Shah Nawaz knew what the missing chunk was about; they were shown a Ministry of Defence file titled INA 273. The file contained a copy of Finney’s report, inclusive of the two last points deleted from the copy supplied by the Intelligence Bureau. A reading of these points reversed the impression generated by the doctored document. After enumerating the general impression, Finney had actually detailed a further line of investigation to assess its validity and suggested circulation of “any conclusive information, one way or the other” because he could foresee that the inquiry would take a long time."

"What Khosla did after reviewing file INA 273—also containing a report about Bose’s possible presence in Russia—is the real eye-opener. Rather than taking the IB to task for supplying him a doctored document, he formally devalued the file by gratuitously leaving a note in it which said, “There is nothing in this file which can be said to have any relevance to the inquiry”. [21] The note was classified as “secret” and that’s rather outrageous because judges do not create classified records. That is the prerogative of the government servants. The slip showed which side Khosla was really on."

................................................................................................

"And I am absolutely flabbergasted that none of the IB people who appeared before Shah Nawaz and Khosla panels referred to the man who was the best-informed Indian about the early inquiries into Bose’s reported death.

"Kalipada Dey told all sort of things to Justice Khosla but never uttered a word about “Rai Bahadur” Bakshi Badrinath, who was the only senior Indian officer on the case. In fact, Dey, Roy, Pritam Singh and Nagina Singh, all members of the Finney-Davies team, were only inspectors. Mullik knew Badrinath personally and had entrusted him with secret missions to Kashmir. Badrinath’s elder son Air Vice Marshal (Retd) Kuldip Bakshi was generous enough to show me a certificate signed by Mullik when his father retired in the 1950s. It was clearly mentioned in it that Badrinath had even worked on Bose’s disappearance in 1941. Unable to understand the value of that document at that time, I made the mistake of not keeping a copy of it. But I did make copies of Badrinath’s personal diaries for 1945-46."

................................................................................................

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April 20, 2022 - April 20, 2022.

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7. Ashes which turned to bones

................................................................................................

Author describes Justice Mukherjee visiting Renkoji temple, and the background history, of Jawaharlal Nehru being informed about the concerns of the then priest, and his being hurt when he was offered financial remuneration by government of India at suggestion of the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru. He recounts the correspondence between various officials of government of India, from PM and others in Delhi to embassy officials in Tokyo, about the matter.

"In the absence of Rauf, embassy staffer Ranbir Singh read the letter and carried out the instruction. On 14 January 1954, he informed Naidu that “though repeatedly pressed to accept financial assistance, the priest made it very clear that he had kept ashes, voluntarily, because of his high regard for Subhas babu, which, in itself, made it impossible for, him to accept any money”.

"As Singh put it, the issue was highly emotive. Mochizuki had told him that guardianship of the ashes was “a source of worry to him” and he was hurt by the irreverence displayed by some visiting Indians. He demanded that the embassy should make a public announcement that Bose’s ashes were kept at his temple. This wasn’t possible for the embassy. “Any official statement”, Singh reasoned, “would raise a storm of protest among some of our more obstinate fellow-citizens here.”"

................................................................................................

But the main point has always been about identity, identification of the ashes, not about anything else.

................................................................................................

" ... A Secretary from the Indian embassy dropping in at a meeting at Renkoji temple in 1958 “discovered that it was sponsored by a number of war criminals. Among those present were ex Lt Gen Oshima, the last Imperial Japanese Ambassador in Berlin, and ex-Lt Gen Kawabe, who commanded the Imperial Japanese Army in Burma”. Little did the secretary appreciate that if it wasn’t for those “war criminals”, he would not have been occupying that official position at such a young age. He could still be toadying under a white man, probably happily.

"The first grant to the Renkoji temple was made on 28 March 1967. JN Dixit’s Top Secret No 305-FS/67 noted that

"the payment was made in cash in the presence of the Administrative Attaché of this mission. …We made the payment conveying that it was only an ad hoc grant in recognition of the services rendered by him to Netaji’s ashes, for upkeep of the temple. Care was taken to avoid conveying the impression that such payments are to be an annual affair. The receipt bearing the signature and seal of the chief priest is being kept on record in the classified file on the subject.

"On April 3, the letter trail resumed again with Dixit relaying the ambassador’s view that “we must continue to compensate the temple in this form till we are in a position to accept Netaji’s ashes back in India”."

"After the expiry of the three-year period, a fresh sanction was issued in 1971-72, when the Khosla Commission had been functioning. The next year the Ministry made no such payment and neither did the temple priest raise any questions about it. This situation made the ministry wonder if it was not the time to stop making the payments.

"The matter was discussed by Deputy Secretary PK Budhwar in a note dated 6 December 1973. He brought it to his superiors’ as well as Indian embassy’s notice that it should be considered “whether we should continue making such payments in respect of an item whose authenticity would also appear to be in some doubt”. Responding to Budhwar’s contentions, P Johari, Minister, Indian Embassy in Tokyo, made some forceful points in his Top Secret No TOK.461(3)/74 dated 8 May 1974:

"Let me say straightaway that we feel very strongly that the payment of Rs 5,000/- per year should continue till such time as we are in a position to take the ashes back. While there is no commitment on our part in this regard, there is a moral obligation to compensate the old and sick priest of the temple for looking after the ashes of Netaji with care and devotion. In reply to your queries, there has been no reaction so far from the priest to the stoppage of payment in 1972-1973. However, you must remember that the priest is almost 90-years-old and in very poor health. This could, perhaps, explain his lack of reaction. There is no guarantee that his successor would also not react if the payment were to be stopped permanently.""

"The MEA had no options but to resume the payments. Year after year they were made and yet, in a stupendous testimony to the Indian official secrecy, no one in the country, no newspaper whatsoever, ever got a clue."

................................................................................................

" ... Ministry of External Affairs under the able leadership of Pranab Mukhejee overcame decades of indecisiveness to prepare a grand plan to bring the ashes to India. It opined that there were “widespread sentiments that Netaji’s birth centenary in 1997 should be befittingly commemorated” and there was no better way to do that than to get Ichiro Okura’s ashes to India."

"The Cabinet eventually decided “that the ashes would not be brought back to India for the present but that the dependability of the arrangement in Japan should be examined” and that India could raise the annual upkeep contribution for the Renkoji temple from ¥ 600,000 to ¥ 1 million."

" ... Haidar sent a four page Top Secret response to Padmanabhaiah.

"Discussions with the priest, Rev Mochizuki show that he is quite happy to carry on the work of looking after the ashes. The presence of the ashes gives his temple some additional importance and some additional income by way of the Yen 600,000 that we donate annually for its upkeep. It might be desirable to increase this contribution, perhaps to Yen one million (Rs. 3,67,782 at this month’s official exchange rate. Last year, Rev Mochizuki told our Embassy that he has absolutely no problem in continuing this work. He also said that his father received the ashes with the blessings of the governments of Japan and India and that he has no intention of doing anything without the full consultation and approval of these two governments.

"As regards contingency plans, these can be drawn up once the type of contingency is known. In case the ashes are removed from the temple but not returned to India, the only location for housing them would be the embassy. …In the event of a sudden unforeseeable contingency, it would be possible to lock the ashes in the strong room in the embassy. Our ambassador feels, and we agree, that the most desirable solution might be for a consensus to be reached in India for the ashes to be brought back with full honour and ceremony. Till that becomes possible, the best option may be to continue the status quo as long as possible despite such inadequacies as have been observed over the last fifty years."

................................................................................................

Author gives a photograph of a note -

"EAM said that he'd consult Netaji’s daughteras as his nearest surviving kin.

7. ... EAM visited Germany in October 1995 and met Dr Anita Pfaff, who said that ashes should be brought back to Germany if their return to India is a matter of controversy. To this, it was pointed out that Japan was not in favour of moving the ashes to any third country. She also discussed the possibility of a suitable memorial for Netaji in India. EAM made no comment on this."

Author points out -

"It obviously was a misleading statement. The nearest surviving kin was not Anita but her mother. Pranab met Emilie, raised the issue and was told that his presence was no longer desirable."

................................................................................................

"Anita, for some reasons, was for bringing the ashes to India. After her mother’s death in 1996, she moved along this line, and, as per official records, visited India “twice in order to build up a consensus in favour of the return of the ashes”. In January 1998 she met Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujaral and “expressed the hope that the new government would take account of her wishes and bring back the ashes to India”.

"In April 1998, just before a court order was to end the official efforts to try and bring Ichiro Okura’s ashes to India, the Prime Minister’s Office assessed the options at hand. PP Shukla, the Joint Secretary to Prime Minister, in a Top Secret note titled “Return of Netaji’s ashes to India” recapitulated the difficulties in the way of the transfer of the ashes to India and went on to comment that

"a decision needs to be taken on whether the ashes are indeed those of Netaji and, if so, whether they can now be brought back to India. From the above, it is clear that there is no particular urgency in settling this mater. However, a view needs to be taken on how to deal with this issue in the future."

................................................................................................

"Finally, no discussion on the Renkoji temple remains would be complete without addressing the question of their possible scientific examination. The idea that Bose’s remains should be subjected to DNA test to resolve the mystery has been in vogue for the last two decades. In an interview to the Times of India on 17 May 2005, Lakshmi Sehgal, after having been exposed as perjurer before the Mukherjee Commission, lectured that “the simplest thing to do is to take the ashes kept in the Renkoji temple at Tokyo and run a DNA match with Anita Pfaff, Netaji’s daughter”. [1]"

And with other members of Bose family.

"The only Bose kin to have gone deeper into the question of DNA test is Surya Kumar Bose, a disbeliever in the air crash theory like his father Amiya Nath Bose. In January 2000, Surya consulted Prof Mark Stoneking at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Prof Stoneking had previously worked for the FBI and helped expose an impostor trying to pass herself off as Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the last Russian Tsar. He told Surya Bose that he was not very hopeful of a successful DNA test on the ashes in Renkoji Temple because any pieces of bones left behind after a cremation are usually so badly charred that all DNA molecules are damaged.

"Regarding the possibility of a mitochondrial DNA test involving his aunt Anita, Surya was given to understand that since the mitochondrial DNA is inherited through the maternal line, "it would be imperative to find a living maternal relative of Subhas Bose to provide a reference sample"."

................................................................................................

" ... Regretting his inability to do the job in his laboratory, Sir Jeffreys—the pioneer of the forensic use of DNA—told the Mukherjee Commission to contact one of the national forensic service laboratories in the UK for they were fully tooled up to perform the complex analysis required in the case.

"The commission sounded off the MEA on 27 January 2003 about Sir Jeffreys’s opinion and asked for the particulars of the national forensic service laboratories in the UK. The ministry still did not break its silence."

................................................................................................

" ... The scientific tests, as and when they are carried out in an independent foreign lab, would not show them to be of Bose—for they are of Ichiro Okura. Therefore, the best way to dispose off the remains would be to respectfully shift them to Tokyo’s Yakusuni shrine—the final resting place for the Japanese war dead."

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April 20, 2022 - April 20, 2022.

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8. How India dealt with Russia over Subhas Bose’s fate

................................................................................................

"It comes through clear from the extant pool of information that several months before his disappearance, Subhas Chandra Bose had been planning to go over to the Russians. Except Habibur Rahman, the man who kept the secret (Appendix VI), all those close to Bose during his last known days eventually conceded that he was USSR-bound at the time of his reported death."

"Anand Mohan Sahay blurted out during his interrogation at the CSDIC that in late 1944 or early 1945 when he called on Japanese Foreign Minister Shigemitsu, his deputy and the India section head in Gaimusho, he was told that Bose “had wished on his last visit to Tokyo to contact the Russian ambassador [Yakov Alexandrovich Malik], but that he was unable to do so because of the lack of Japanese support”. Later Bose himself told Sahay that “he had asked the Japanese Army authorities to arrange a passage for him to Russia via Manchuria”. [3]"

" ... Also testifying before the same commission was one of the Japanese officers who participated in those negotiations. Morio Takakura said that in June 1945 he joined a meeting in Bangkok where Bose, Terauchi and Isoda had thrashed out the situation arising out of Tokyo’s inability to directly deal with the Russians on Bose’s behalf. About the outcome of this meeting, Takakura, a colonel in 1945, had this to say:

"There was a decision among Japanese military circles that it will be better for Mr Chandra Bose to go to some area where he could have freedom of action than coming to Japan…for instance, Soviet-Manchuria border…. The HQ at Tokyo accepted the plan of Netaji for his going to Russia via Dairen and the HQ selected Lt Gen Shidei to accompany Netaji. [5]

"Takakura’s evidence on this point was corroborated by Isoda. He too testified that at Bangkok on 16 August 1945 he and Bose had worked out the last minute modalities of his transfer to Manchuria. He told Justice Khosla that Bose was on his way to Russia."

"The two Indians who attended or knew of the August 16 Bangkok meeting were Habibur Rahman and Bose’s confidential secretary Major Bhaskaran Menon. Bhaskaran told the Khosla Commission that he remembered Bose sending a secret message to the USSR, which he could not have done without some sort of prior contact with the Russians. Thirty years later in Chennai, a gravely ill Menon affirmed before a Mukherjee Commission official that “from April 1945 onwards Netaji had discussion on a number of occasions with General Isoda in his private room about his plan to go to Russia through Manchuria”. [7]

"In a sort of dying statement, Menon reiterated what he had testified before GD Khosla, but it was not taken seriously. After the meeting in Bangkok Bose grew restless like Menon had never seen him before. He spent the rest of the day and night issuing instructions, clearing unsettled issues as if it was his last day at work. He did not sleep and Bhaskaran was on his toes throughout taking dictations of frantic messages. And then Bose dictated something whose meaning would dawn upon Menon later on. “I am writing all this to you on the eve of a long journey by air and who knows an accident may not overtake me.” [8]

"Like Menon, Colonel Pritam Singh too lived long enough to depose before all the panels and stood his ground till his death in 2010. His belief that the air crash “was a mere cover story to cover up the journey of Netaji to Russia with the help of the Japanese” was based on his exchanges with Rahman and Japanese intelligence officials. Singh had remained by Bose’s side till August 17 evening and expected to follow him to the USSR. He told the Mukherjee Commission that a day earlier Bose privately informed him that his negotiations with the Russians through the Japanese foreign minister had been successful, and the Russians had given the assurance that he was welcome to come over. Pritam Singh evidenced that Bose was preparing for a long haul."

"And, as to what advantage lay for the Japanese military in sending Bose to Russia, most revealing was the statement Hikari Kikan interpreter Kinji Watanabe had made to PES Finney in 1945:

"Bose’s point was: “In order to destroy our common enemy, Britain, both Japan and the Provisional Government should try every possible means and help each other. Therefore, I earnestly request Tokyo to act as ‘go-between’ and let me approach Soviet Russia. Once I have been given an interview with the Russian ambassador, I have perfect confidence in my success in persuading Russia to help our independence movement and at the same time I am sure that I can do something to improve the relations between Japan and Russia, and it might serve to decrease the menace Japan is feeling on the Manchurian side. I trust if I succeed it will result in killing two birds with one stone. And if my trial proves unsuccessful, I shall only lose my face, that’s all. I am nothing but head of a revolutionary government…. [10]"

................................................................................................

"Justice Mukherjee, on the other hand, reasoned why a please-all evidence for the plan was hard to come by:

"It is trite that a stratagem including the matter of its execution ingenuously and meticulously hatched in secret cannot, owing to its very nature, be proved by direct evidence unless one or the other member of the party thereto divulges the secret. It can, therefore, be proved by circumstantial evidence and the individual or detached acts or omissions of the planners including their dialogue…. [12]"

" ... Not factored in by him while drawing this conclusion were pre-independence, legally inadmissible intelligence reports quoting Russian diplomats’ claim that Bose was in the USSR in 1946. Mukherjee was also not shown by the Government of India some important post-Independence official records. Such as Ayer’s secret report revealing that Terauchi had taken the responsibility to send Bose to the Russians."

................................................................................................

"Just how grave this passivity on the part of our Government has been would be better understood if we juxtapose the Bose case with the tragedy of Raoul Wallenberg—a young Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis in 1944 before his disappearance from Budapest in January 1945.

"Wallenberg was initially reported dead and then it emerged that he had been abducted by the Red Army. Just as it happened with Subhas Bose, the rumours of Raoul Wallenberg’s presence in the USSR began swirling thereafter. And just as Bose’s kin and admirers strove to get at the truth, Wallenberg’s influential family, admirers and the people he had rescued began making efforts to find out what had become of him. It started with Raoul’s mother Maj Von Dardel taking up the issue with the Swedish government.

"From this point on, the two cases begin looking different. That is because the intentions of the Swedish authorities were not mala fide. The moment it got the leads that Raoul Wallenberg could have been alive in the USSR, the Swedish government wasted no time in contacting the Soviet authorities.

"The Swedes did not enjoy the sort of close relations which the Indians did, but that did not come in the way of their quest for truth. Eight written and five oral official approaches concerning Wallenberg were made in between 1945 and 1947.

"India was effectively in the Soviet bloc in post-Stalin period. There was nothing under the sun we did not discuss with our Soviet friends. Only one issue wasn’t officially touched—not even with a bargepole."

Author relates stonewalling and worse by Soviets, which included caustic fraudulent articles in Soviet publications.

"Sweden ignored this aggressive political posturing. When Prime Minister Tage Erlander visited Moscow in 1956, he put the Wallenberg issue high on bilateral agenda despite strong Soviet objections. Erlander handed over to the Russians the “testimony from German and other prisoners of war, making it perfectly clear that Raoul Wallenberg had been in prison in Moscow at least between 1945-1947”. [21] A declassified Soviet record shows Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov noting that “Erlander persistently asked us to find a solution to the situation in order to settle the matter” and that “the Wallenberg issue was such an irritating element in Soviet-Swedish relations that it might have a negative effect on them”. [22]

"Cornered by the Swedes, the Soviets finaly owned up the basic truth: Wallenberg was indeed in the USSR after 1945. In 1957 USSR Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko’s bombshell of a letter referred to Wallenberg’s death following a heart attack a decade earlier in Lubyanka prison at the KGB’s HQ. Supporting this claim was a document, copy of a 17 July 1947 memorandum written by Lt Col A Smoltsov, chief of health services at the prison, stating that Wallenberg had died on that day and his body had been cremated. All that the Soviet had said up to that time about not knowing anything about Wallenberg, thorough investigation, extensive search of records et al, was part of an elaborate, state-sanctioned hoax.

"The Swedes did not give up still. Various accounts available to them showed that Wallenberg had lived beyond 1947, when he was just 34. There was the case of Prof Nanna Svartz of Sweden meeting Russian Prof Aleksander Miashnikov in Moscow in January 1961. Svartz raised the issue “close to the heart of the Swedes” and Miashnikov went on to tell her that he had actually treated Wallenberg at a mental hospital. When she got back home, Svartz narrated the account to Erlander. The Swedish PM acted promptly, and at the highest level. On 25 February 1961 Swedish Ambassador Rolf Sohlman met USSR top man Nikita Khrushchev to hand him over a letter from Erlander containing the professor’s account."

................................................................................................

" ... In spite of the knowledge that Bose could have made it to the USSR, New Delhi never officially utilized even a jot of its diplomatic and political clout with Moscow to find out the facts so long statesmanly Jawaharlal Nehru and his family of “world leaders” were at the helm.

"The 1950s and 1960s were the decades of denial, precluding the possibility of replicating the Svartz episode in India. Humiliation and intimidation was in store for those who tried to sensitise the authorities. An unverifiable account involved globetrotting Dr Satyanarayan Sinha. He claimed that he had implored the Prime Minister at a diplomatic gathering to informally raise the Bose issue with the Soviet ambassador. “But Nehru…dismissed that suggestion as a ‘talk of chandukhana’ (gossip in a den of opium addicts).” [23]

"An on-oath account comes from Ardhendu Sarkar, a post graduate in mechanical engineering from the UK and former chief engineer of the Heavy Engineering Corporation. Sarkar testified before the Mukherjee Commission, and elaborated to me personally, that while on a deputation in Soviet Russia in the early 1960s, he had been told something mind-boggling by his senior at Gorlovka machine building plant, near Donetesk in Ukraine. BA Zerovin had spent some time in a gulag. Zerovin was not his original name. He was a German Jew, who had been brought to the USSR, sent to a Siberian camp for indoctrination, given a new identity and married to a Russian.

"Sarkar got on intimate terms with his senior and in one of their moments of camaraderie Zerovin let it slip to his colleague from Bengal that he had met Subhas Bose in Berlin and “again in 1948” in a gulag somewhere beyond the end of trans-Siberian Railways in the vicinity of the Ural Mountains. According to Zerovin’s account, “Bose” was apparently being treated fine, given a car and was moving around with two guards. In their short exchange, “Bose” told Zerovin that he expected to go back to India soon.

"After letting out his secret, Zerovin realised that he had spoken too much. He cautioned Sarkar to keep it to himself in their mutual interest, so long as he was in the USSR. But Sarkar “naïvely” walked into the Embassy of India in Moscow—if you met him, you would believe that he did—and got it all off his chest before a Secretary. The Secretary was not amused. “Why have you come to this country?” he asked Sarkar and lashed out at him peremptorily. “Does your job involve poking nose in politics?!” Sarkar’s blood ran cold. The Secretary saw fear in his eyes and advised him not to “discuss this with anyone”.

"“Just do your work and forget what you’ve just said,” he rebuffed Sarkar as he sent him off. Sarkar returned home in a state of shock and never opened his mouth till his children had settled down.

"Evidently, there were many others who never ever spoke out for fear of retribution."

................................................................................................

"Wrinkles of angst and helplessness formed on former Ministry of External Affairs officer Rai Singh Yadav’s battered face as he thought back to the time when a Russian diplomat in Europe had teased him. “Your Quisling was with us!”

"“Our people did not want to disturb relations. They knew Netaji was in Siberia. He had been left out in the cold!”

"This was a one-time director of pre-R&AW era Information Service of India of the MEA talking."

................................................................................................

"I saw a secret MEA noting defending the dispatching of note verbales to Russia over the Bose case for it is “the most formal method of communication between States”. This, I believe, undermines the seriousness of the issue involved. I don’t want to get into linguistics, but may I ask why this “most formal method” was not utilized in 2007 when then External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee was frisked at the Moscow airport? Why did the ministry issue a démarche to the Russians instead? ... "

" ... In 1985 just before Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was to arrive in the United States on a state visit, President Ronald Reagan granted a presidential pardon to Adil Shahryar, an Indian serving a 35-year sentence for offences that included an attempt to blow up a ship.

"How did that happen? Shahryar’s devastated father Mohammed Yunus scrambled to get his only child out. He was able to pull some strings, for he was “a former foreign service official and long-time sycophant to the Gandhi family”. [29] In fact, it is on record that Yunus handled matters related to Bose. Some of the Nehru-era papers where his name appears were found to have been destroyed illegally."

"Shahryar was not set free until, the story goes, Rajiv Gandhi had made a personal intervention. Why he did that is the stuff of conspiracy theories."

"The issuance of a mere note verbale in the case of Subhas Bose signalled to the Russians that the Indian side did not consider the issue a very serious matter. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... For nearly half a century the Soviets feigned ignorance about the slaughter of virtually the entire top Polish brass, some 22,000 officers, in 1943. They had once even set up a commission which after what they called “rigorous inquiry” fixed the blame for the Katyn Forest massacre on the Nazis. So long Poland remained in the Communist bloc, the demands for the truth were successfully suppressed. Then Poland became democratic and its people and government did what the Swedes had done for Wallenberg.

"The outcome couldn’t have been more dramatic. Mikhail Gorbachev went on TV to accept the Soviet guilt. The same Gorbachev who, according to a story in Hindustan Times, had once “evaded a direct answer” to a researcher’s query about Bose, “and is alleged to have said it was up to both governments to solve the issue once and for all”. [31] ... "

................................................................................................

"Touradjev got it wrong. Bose had worked out his escape from Kolkata in such an ingenious way that by the time his disappearance was discovered, he had already crossed Peshawar. According to Suresh Bose, his younger brother “was an arch secret service man, with a dogged determination in carrying out his plans, always unmindful of the difficulties and consequences that they would entail”. [34]

"The Allies came to know of Bose’s undersea voyage because they had broken secret German codes. Bose was not targetted for it would have sabotaged their overall strategy to defeat the Nazis. The Bose file in the National Archive of Australia also shows that even the Japanese secret telegrams were being intercepted by the country’s navy during the war."

"Something did emerge in 2005 and it served as a reminder that the colonial British wanted to get rid of Bose. Prof Eunan O'Halpin of Dublin’s Trinity College stumbled upon records proving that the British foreign office, which controls the MI-6, “had ordered the assassination” of Bose “just after he had made his ‘grand escape’ from Kolkata”. [36] Adding more insight was Anthony Paul, a leading columnist for Singapore’s Straits Times. Paul referred to his talk with an acquaintance in the MI-6. On his asking whether James Bond creator Ian Fleming’s “fantasies had any basis in fact, whether London ever really licensed its agents to kill”, the officer replied that “there have been rare, very rare exceptions” [37] and named Subhas Bose as one of the two possible targets."

"I fail to see the logic behind the Government’s stand that since Talwar was a traitor it somehow dented Bose’s credentials. If you accepted this logic, someone might say that since we know now—thanks to unassailable declassified CIA and State Department records—that during the 1971 war one minister of Indira Gandhi’s Cabinet betrayed India’s war plans to hostile Richard Nixon administration, Prime Minister Gandhi’s image stands tarnished as well. No, it doesn’t. The minister betrayed Prime Minister Gandhi’s trust and committed high treason. Bhagat Ram Talwar was not Subhas Bose’s childhood friend. He was one small operative of communist orientation and Bose knew many like him.

That is comment on the said college, even without author making it clear that no one took it seriously, which is a matter of course.

................................................................................................

" ... A missing link surfaced when Touradjev found in the KGB archive a letter Bose had written in October 1944 to Yakov Malik, the Soviet Ambassador in Tokyo, seeking USSR’s support for India’s freedom. The letter bore a comment from the Commissiar of State Security (NKGB) to the chief of the 5th division of the first command of NKVD—the forerunner of the KGB. Bose had written to Malik that he wanted “to pay a visit to Your Excellency and find the way through which your Government can help us for success of our struggle for freedom”. [38]

"The least our government could have done was to request the Russians to send this document of historic value to the National Archives in New Delhi. Many renowned Bose experts continue to hold that such a letter—which bolsters the evidence for Bose’s plan to escape to the USSR—was never written or received by Malik.

"On a positive note, and giving Touradjev the credit for this remarkable discovery, he was good enough to testify before the Mukherjee Commission that there are records on Bose in the KGB archives—a term loosely used for the archives of the FSB and SVR, housing old KGB, NKVD-era documents."

................................................................................................

" ... Wallenberg researchers came across evidence that the Soviets “employed a system of assigning numbers rather than names for special prisoners” and “during interrogations, prisoners were often registered under false names”. [41] Justice Mukherjee was told in Russia that if Bose had been assigned an assumed name upon his entry into the USSR, no records about him under his own name would ever be found."

"Dr Purabi Roy, Sobhanlal Dutta Gupta and Dr Hari Vasudevan to scour through the Russian archives. There, while interacting with Russian scholars, the Indians got convinced that the Russian archives were holding secret records on Bose’s presence in the USSR beyond 1945.

"Dr Hari Vasudevan visited the KGB’s central archival office and “was ‘aggressively rebuffed'” for asking about files on Bose. “I was told no requests would be entertained without considerable official pressure from India,” [43] he told Hindustan Times. The problems did not get resolved when the scholars sought intervention by the Indian embassy.

"What baffled the Asiatic Society team the most was the studied indifference of New Delhi. According to one member of the team, the then Indian ambassador in Moscow, Ronen Sen, made it clear that beyond the note verbale “that was as far as the embassy could go”. [44]

Author writes about the help from Asiatic Society the team received, about subsequent media blitz, and the counteroffensive by government through a private scholar.

"The MEA records show that a Russian defence ministry note verbale dated 28 October 1996 was received by the Indian embassy from the Russian foreign ministry enclosing a letter from head of the archives in response to Singh’s letter. “There are no records with the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation about the catastrophe in August 1945 and death of...Bose.” Joychandra Singh put his own spin on this to give journalists the impression that Russia upheld the Indian government-approved theory. He harped on his “12-year-old research” [45] on the issue, which had been inspired by a communication from the Indira Gandhi government urging him to propagate the Taipei death story.

"Singh ran out of steam soon after, while Dr Purabi Roy continued to take the Government to task alone. “If they are confident that Netaji was actually killed in a plane crash in 1945, why have they always tried to scuttle any fresh investigation? If they are clean, let them provide us access to the two archives and see what’s there?” [46] In 1996, she chanced to reach out to the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. Viktor Chernomyrdin mooted the idea of an Indo-Russian commission to investigate the missing Indian nationals within the territory of the erstwhile USSR."

................................................................................................

" ... In 2000 the Russian-Swedish group presented its findings on Raoul Wallenberg. The Swedish report concluded that "Wallenberg's death could only be accepted if it were confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt" and that it had "not happened, partly for the want of a credible death certificate, and partly because the testimony about Raoul Wallenberg being alive after 1947 cannot be dismissed". [50] That is, the Swedes refused to treat the Smoltsov memorandum as evidence of Wallenberg's death even though it mentioned his name. And here we are in India, willing to accept the Japanese foreign ministry's assertion that the records pertaining to soldier Ichiro Okura were for Bose somehow."

Author compares exemplary treatment of Raoul Wallenberg accorded by Swedish government to atrocious pronouncements by the then minister in Parliament rejecting report of Mukherjee Commission and its conclusion about there being no evidence of death of Netaji in the plane crash, or of the crash itself that day at Taipei.

This year, the Swedish government is commemorating Raoul Wallenberg´s centenary by honouring his memory, not diluting in any way its resolve to know the truth about his fate. The official website for "Raoul Wallenberg 2012" repeats that "the Swedish government is still demanding an explanation" [53] for Wallenberg's disappearance. That resolve has got a new boost from Moscow with a former Special Archive head revealing in January that he saw a file concerning Wallenberg, "challenging the FSB's insistence that it has no documents about the man". [54]"

"In the final assessment, the information contained in the Russian note verbales is no gold standard of proof as the Government of India would like to believe. We cannot overlook the Raoul Wallenberg and Katyn forest massacre cases, where the Soviets had lied for years before coming out with the truth under duress."

................................................................................................

"Not that we Indians have never feigned ignorance over things which actually happened. Lies are often given out for reasons that have nothing to do with national interest. In 1987, a Swedish journalist broke the news about kickbacks paid by AB Bofors to top Indian officials. In his reaction in the Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi not only denied the claim—subsequently established—he actually termed it a “foreign conspiracy” to destabilise India.

"Sitting heavily on our collective memory is the recent case of Radia tapes. When the media first suggested that many important people had been bugged, the Government denied it outright. Had it not been for the subsequent leak of a secret government record online and the pressure mounted by bloggers, journalists and politicians, the UPA government would have hushed up the matter.

"If these are not good enough examples, worth recalling in some detail is an illuminating episode involving the governments of India and the United States: In 1963, US President John F Kennedy revealed to Sudhir Ghose, an eminent Gandhian and ambassador-at-large for Indian interests since pre-independence days, that the Chinese attack of the previous year had made Prime Minister Nehru beseech the US for military support. Two years later, on 15 March 1965, Ghose recalled the incident during a speech in the Rajya Sabha that “the father of non-alignment asked for American air protection” and the US President “did respond and order one of the American aircraft carriers to proceed to the Bay of Bengal”. [56]

"Though it was aimed at reminding the nation that America was after all India’s friend and Nehru gave precedence to national interest over the principles he talked about, the statement created a mega furore. Loyal Congress MPs mauled Ghose for making such an “outrageous allegation” to sully the memory of the late Prime Minister. Backed by the Left MPs, they sought clarification from the Prime Minister.

"Lal Bahadur Shastri summoned Ghose to his office, where in the presence of Home Minister Gulzari Lal Nanda and Foreign Secretary CS Jha, Ghose was told that there was nothing on record to suggest that Nehru had ever made such a request to Kennedy. Since Ghose had heard it straight from Kennedy, he stood his ground and asked Prime Minister Shastri to ascertain the facts from the US Ambassador in New Delhi before making a statement in Parliament. He said if he was proven wrong, he would apologise publicly.

"A day before the PM was to make a statement in Parliament, Ghose learnt from his American sources that Jha had been told by the embassy that the US Government did have the letters from Nehru and the same could be produced if the Government of India desired it. Thereafter, Ghose marched into the PM’s office to see Shastri who was unwilling to meet him because he had by then discovered that the copies of Nehru’s letters were indeed available with the Government somewhere.

"The PM went on to state in Parliament that Nehru did not ask for an American aircraft carrier. Shastri was playing with words and Ghose was not willing to play ball. Having lost face, he shot off a personal letter to Shastri, telling him that his clarification made no difference to the substance of his statement that India had sought military support from the US. Ghose repeated that Nehru’s letter to Kennedy, personally delivered by Ambassador BK Nehru, had sought “16 squadrons of fighting aircraft”, which was much more than a carrier. In his reply, Shastri—whose name is a byword for honesty in present-day India—asked Ghose to let the matter rest. Ghose would have perhaps let that be, but he was publicly humiliated when the US State Department backed Prime Minister Shastri’s statement that Nehru did not ask for an American aircraft carrier, leaving out other vital details.

"Ghosh then used his formidable connections and goodwill with the US lawmakers and managed to corner Secretary of State Dean Rusk during a public hearing in the Senate in 1966. Rusk was evasive at first and then said it was not proper for him to discuss correspondences between the two heads of the governments. Ghosh averred in his 1967 book that Rusk’s cross-examination “clearly established that India did ask for air protection and the US did respond to the request”. [57]

"It was not until recently—long after Ghose’s death—that his version finally prevailed. In 1998, the US government declassified the two letters that Nehru had written to Kennedy, and in November 2010, the Indian Express ran a story by veteran journalist Inder Malhotra laying bare their contents. Nehru had asked for a “minimum of 12 squadrons of supersonic all-weather fighters” and a “modern radar cover” and also the support of US air force personnel “to man these fighters and radar installations while our personnel are being trained.” [58] The letters had indeed been secretly delivered by Ambassador Nehru, who never discussed their contents with anyone but told Inder Malhotra that he had “locked them up in a safe that only the ambassador could open”. [59]"

................................................................................................

"The Russians have a knack for discovering records accidently. A BBC documentary produced in the 1990s shows then director of Moscow state archives, Sergei Mironenko, making an interesting observation about the secret “Operation myth” files about the investigation into the death of Adolf Hitler. “We only discovered these files about two years ago. Before that, they were so sensitive that their very existence wasn’t even recorded here.” [60]

"That isn’t very surprising. Files are nothing, governments can even deny the existence of projects, departments and even massive organisations everyone knows about. Our Government did not accept that an entity such as R&AW existed quite some time after it was formed. In Britain, the home of democracy, the formal acceptance that MI6 actually existed came more than eight decades after it was formed."

Author goes into his correspondence with government of India regarding his request to see correspondence between India and Russia or USSR over Netaji.

"It is not intelligible to me, and nor will it be to the people of India, as to how the disclosure of correspondence dealing with the disappearance of a national hero, whom the Government holds to have died in 1945, can be a threat to the “security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the State” [India] in 2006?"

"Our embassy in Moscow again approached the Government of Russian Federation to get their consent to the disclosure of documents under reference; but the Government of Russian Federation reiterated that documents were submitted exclusively for official use by the Government of India…. However they state that the Indian citizen mentioned in the note of the embassy [myself] can approach the authorities of the Federal and State Archives of the Russian Federation, through the Embassy of India, for permission to get to know the materials deposited in Federal and State Archives of the Russian Federation. [Emphasis supplied by the MEA]"

Author made the recommended request for documents be made through Indian embassy, not just for him but National Archives of India.

"And then the Ministry of External Affairs lapsed into silence."

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April 20, 2022 - April 21, 2022.

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9. The ‘Dead Man’ returns

................................................................................................

"Dilip Mukherjee’s was an exceptional case. In his first meeting, he went straight into Bhagwanji’s room. The Banerjee family had endeared itself to the holy man so much that he had granted them the prerogative of being with him without any barrier.

"In his mind Dilip had prepared himself well. “I thought I would ask him this and that question,” he told me in fairly good English for an elderly man living in Gorakhpur. But as his eyes met Bhagwanji’s penetrating glance from behind silver-rimmed glasses, Dilip recoiled, as if he had been hit by a thunderclap of an unimaginable reality. Knowing beforehand “who” he was going to meet didn’t quite lighten the blow of beholding “aged Netaji” in 1983. Born 23 January 1897, Subhas Chandra Bose would have been 86 if he were living then.

"“He was very old, but definitely Netaji!”

"Dilip burst out in tears and fell on Bhagwanji’s feet. “Netaji, Netaji!” “No, Don’t talk to me like that,” the holy man told him softly."

" ... I was sitting there right in front of him for about an hour. I think of that meeting every day till today. It was an unbelievable sight, but no illusion,” misty-eyed Mukherjee kept talking. “He asked my name and I said ‘Dilip’. ‘Oh, can you sing?’ was his instant response.” “Do you know Netaji’s best friend Dilip Kumar Roy was a famous singer?” Mukherjee asked me. He reminisced further: “I spoke to him in Bangla. He followed every word of it, but replied in Hindi.”

"“At one point we were discussing political orientations. I praised the Communists and got scolded by him. He said: ‘What do you know about them? I have seen them from close. I have been to Russia. I saw how a few luxuriated while the rest suffered. I went to their grand palaces. This body [of mine] even endured torture in Siberia’.”

Author had been disgisted with the previous, Coochbehar case, and was sceptical until hearing about Russia and Siberia. He asked about the crash.

"I was then told that Bhagwanji had made some remarks in passing. “There was no air crash that day; it was concocted.” The plane which had reportedly crashed never ever took off from the Taipei aerodrome, he had further said. He was confident that a look through the aerodrome logbook would bear him out. He even indicated that “he had reached his destination” by the time the death news was announced. Interestingly enough, he spoke of having been in a gulag in south central Siberia, somewhere in the vicinity of Lake Baikal and the Ural Mountains."

................................................................................................

" ... From the mid-1950s onwards, Bhagwanji lived in complete seclusion at various places in UP—Lucknow, Naimisharanya, Basti, Ayodhya and Faizabad. In the 1980s he was being referred to as “Gumnami Baba”—the holy man who had lost his identity—and the term stuck. Bhagwanji’s most preferred terms for himself were “Mahakaal”—son of Goddess Mother Kali—and “Dead Man”, because he was a “living dead”.

"The first disciple of Dead Man was a poor Sanskrit teacher Mahadeo Prasad Mishra. Around 1955, both lodged themselves in a rented house in Lucknow’s Singar Nagar locality. After a while, Mahadeo’s widowed daughter Sarsawati Devi Shukla, along with her infant son Rajkumar, joined them as Bhagwanji’s attendant. Soon Dead Man had found a disciple in Itwah aristocrat Surendra Singh Chaudhury.

"For some time, Dead Man lived with relative ease and comfort. There were hardly any occasions for him to step out into the city. The last was when he needed a new pair of eyeglasses. Accompanied by an unknown driver, he checked into a famous optician’s shop. Trying out a few spectacles, he removed his headgear. In an instant, his shaved bald pate, round eyeglasses and a familiar-looking visage had stunned another customer. “Netaji!” he said. The next moment two young men prostrated in front of Dead Man. His “cover” blown, he rushed out and the car sped away. “This is why I now keep this moustache and beard,” Bhagwanji summed up the moral of the story a few years later to former INA secret service man Pabitra Mohan Roy."

Author writes about him shifting several times, to forest of Naimisharanya living in temples, then to Ayodhya. He'd rarely allow people seeing him, and could only be heard from behind a curtained window; he spoke in English, Hindi or bangla, sounded like someone grown up in Calcutta, and like an army man. He mentions him using a transmitter.

" ... Once Gurubasant Singh saw an army Colonel go inside with a "puffed chest" and then emerging shaken. "He told me, 'that man sitting inside is a general'."

Author writes about the spontaneous public discontentment after he'd passed away in September 1985, and his strictures about not talking of him no longer held.

................................................................................................

Author discusses further facts, about the materials found amongst possessions of the holy man after his funeral, including books and letters; he discusses the contacts of his and the letters, in weighing the question of his far it his yo establish that it indeed was Netaji. He ends the chapter at a point where a notation on a letter was identified by a handwriting expert as indeed that by Netaji.

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April 21, 2022 - April 21, 2022.

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10. Why ‘Dead Man’ tale can’t be wished away

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For the first time author mentions Mukherjee Commission being officially aware of the holy man possibly being Netaji, due to a witness bringing that angle in.

Most of the chapter us about examination of the evidence by author as a news media journalist investigating the possibility, and about the one sided partial bent showed by Government of India giving credence only to those media reports that fell in line with their stance.

................................................................................................

Author further gives story of Netaji’s travel from Saigon in August 1945, and other details around that time, as told by the holy man to some disciples, amongst other many things he said, all subsequently published as a book.

As per this account, Netaji never did go to Taipei in August 1945, but separated from his INA colleague before, author guesses at Tourane.

Author shows evidence that Netaji visited Tokyo in December 1944 in connection with his suggestion to Japan that they make friends with Russia via Taipei.

There's mention in the Allied intelligence reports quoted by author to the effect that Netaji visited Moscow while he was in Tokyo in December 1944. This supports the account by the holy man. Author quotes Suresh Bose mentioning that Netaji had met Stalin in that time.

Author quotes the holy man having mentioned that General Douglas MacArthur sent a message to Louis Mountbatten and Harry Truman that "Subhash Chandra Bose has escaped again", when Netaji disappeared.

................................................................................................

Author quotes the description of Siberian camps by the holy man who said he'd experience thereof.

"He did not escape but left with Russian consent around 1949, the year when war crime trials ended."

Author quotes him saying he wasn't a prisoner and was grateful to Joseph Stalin for treating him not like enemy, and that they concurred about India being not free.

Author discusses truth of this by going over facts.

................................................................................................

According to Holy man, Netaji was in China as guest of Mao Tse Tung in 1949 at the ceremony on October 1. He visited Beijing underground city, according to Holy man. In a meeting, Mao told him that Aksai Chin did indeed belong to India, and mocked the PM of India for having no clue as China built a six lane highway across.

Author speaks of newspaper headlines to the effect of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose being in China, of Netaji's eldest brother Sharat Chandra Bose being aware of it, and of Thevar visiting China and meeting Netaji there.

................................................................................................

"Around 1955 Bhagwanji left China and headed towards India. He spent some time in some Himalayan caves and crossing the Manasarovar region on foot, ..."

Author surmised with slightly roundabout writing that government propped up the Coochbehar sadhu around 1959, mainly due to becoming aware of Bhagwanji’s being in UP.

He quotes Bhagwanji to the effect that he'd himself propped up the man in Coochbehar to mislead the "combine".

Author mentions CIA training of intelligence officers in India and Barun Sengupta’s reporting to the Khosla Commission that they were looking for Netaji in '60s.

................................................................................................

Author discusses Bhagwanji’s being behind Dalai Lama's escape to India, and East Bengal becoming independent.

There's more discussion about his involvement in Vietnam War. Author includes a photograph of Vietnam contingent in Paris in 1969, with one person sporting a look entirely unlike diplomats, who reminds immediately of Netaji with certain plausible differences from his younger years.

................................................................................................

Author questions the report of intelligence inquiries regarding Bhagwanji being not made available to Mukherjee Commission.

He quotes IB being questioned by Khosla Commission on this, and denying it, to the extent possible.

................................................................................................

And, last but not least, if one accepts the identification, then perhaps the communication from Netaji to his wife need not have involved any material whatsoever.

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April 21, 2022 - April 22, 2022.

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11. Subhas Bose alive at 115?

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After discussing the disbelievers, and their attitude, author goes into that of the opposite camp, who were silent after Justice Mukherjee Commission report concluded, in absence of evidence to the contrary, that Netaji was probably no more. But then it came yo light that Justice Mukherjee believed that Bhagwanji was no other than Netaji, and this camp pronounced that Netaji wasn't necessarily gone.

Author gives their manifold arguments. One is about 115 being not necessarily out of question as age of a living human. Another, historic, is about Bhagwanji’s site of cremation being Guptar Ghat of Ayodhya, where, legend has it, God Rama stepped into a temple and vanished from site.

Author reports Bhagwanji having told his disciples that he was to go away again gor a while, to reappear at an oppotune time.

Author describes events of Bhagwanji’s last days, from taking ill to cremation, and his body being guarded even more by Dr Mishra and family, with no one allowed to see him; he talks also about Dr Mishra being in tension until the flames engulfed the remains, and then relaxing visibly. He reports Dr Mishra always terminate it as Bhagwanji’s going away.

"There are people who think Dr Mishra is another Habibur Rahman. "

Author mentions his disciples believing Bhagwanji being Netaji, and having faith in Bhagwanji’s return, their faith in his Divinity.

................................................................................................

Author mentions Satya Sai Baba praise Netaji on August 15, 2007, and wishes that Shivraj Patil, who had declared faith in him, had heard him, rejecting the crash theory, publicly, on the subject of Netaji.

He writes of another holy man talking of continuing existence of Netaji.

He discusses another holy man, whose fans included Michael Gorbachev and Al Gore, speaking of Netaji, wondering if Nehru was genuinely uncertain about the aircraft crash.

Author, clearly not at ease asserting or even stating matters likely to be scoffed at by those who consider everything beyond senses nonsensical, discusses a long list of respected leaders and others who have declared otherwise, and not just as a formality of creed.

Author goes into quotes from Bhagwanji about Siddhashram and his having spent time there, his having been received in course of his wandering through Himalayan region in ashram by yogis who were several millennia of age, including Agastya, and also about yoga, tantra, and more.

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April 22, 2022 - April 22, 2022.

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12. Resolving the mystery

................................................................................................

Author discusses the need of discussion about Netaji’s death or false theory thereof, and prevalent attitudes in government and elsewhere since independence.

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Author describes the opportunistic change in stance of Congress in 1946, when, sensing the Great surge in people due to INA, Congress changed from abuse of Netaji to defense of INA at Red Fort trials. He quotes captain Budhwar who was a double agent and testified against INA.

He supports this with his findings from going over his newspaper archives of 1945-46, where he saw congress against fascism and Japanese imperialism, but without any such expressions against Churchill, despite his severely foul pronouncements against Hindus, and his deliberately causing the famine in Bengal during war, which resulted in millions dying of starvation.

................................................................................................

Author gives extensive description of questions put to Jawaharlal Nehru in response to his indirect swipes at Netaji in a public meeting in Calcutta via a pamphlet written at behest of Sharat Chandra Bose and distributed by his son, DwijendraNathBose, and reports that, as a result, Jawaharlal Nehru was heckled at his next appearance in Calcutta.

Author reports Dwijendra Nath Bose invoking this pamphlet when invited by Shah Nawaz Khan committee in 1956, who recoiled, and asked whether Nehru hadn't personally defended INA at Red Fort.

He reports that Dwijendra Nath Bose was unimpressed, and countered that it was merely in order to win elections that congress had changed stance, after having disowned the 1942 revolution and kowtowed abjectly before British government.

................................................................................................

Author mentions that Wavell was informed by UP government " ... handwritten leaflets are found saying that if any INA soldiers were killed, Britishers would be murdered. ... "

"The real impact of INA was felt more after the war ... " Author quotes Lt. Gen. Sinha writing three decades later.

................................................................................................

" ... Nehru’s stirring "Tryst with Destiny" speech had not a word about the man but for whom the day would not have come in 1947", author points out.

................................................................................................

Repeatedly, one is reminded while reading about the actions of government of India for over six decades after independence, of JFK, and author brings it up now, quoting some portions of the final arrangements by Jim Garrison as depicted in the film.

He speaks of JFK act of 1992 in US as a consequence. He quotes Robert gates speaking with tears about hope of open information helping to get rid of suspicions about his agency.

................................................................................................

Author here gives a personal wish list, which includes a similar act in India, to be named appropriately after Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, beginning with government of India declaring Netaji the first head of government of free India, and express gratitude to Japan for help.

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April 22, 2022 - April 22, 2022.

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Appendix

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I: The loot of the INA treasure

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Author talks of Ramamurti, Ayer and Takakura, who was reportedly threatened by the former for years.

Ramamurti and his brother were seen by Japanese to be living in luxury in post war era when wealthy Japanese found times hard, author mentions.

Author quotes correspondence between Indian mission in Tokyo, Governor of Bombay and the PMO, with clear implication that Figges was involved too in the theft of INA treasure.

................................................................................................

Nehru wrote against it claiming it as an excuse that the Bose family had not accepted that Netaji was dead.

One has to question the stories fed to India since Independence about Nehru family having donated all to India, if he saw gold and jewellery worth Rs 90,000/- in early fifties, and thought it was cheap.

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April 22, 2022 - April 22, 2022.

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II: The strange case of Taipei air crash

................................................................................................

Author goes over the crash related testimonies, of various supposedly witnesses, and picks them apart.

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April 22, 2022 - April 22, 2022.

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III: Views of Subhas Bose’s family on his fate

................................................................................................

Author tells about Sugata Bose’s book and takes apart his falsification regarding Bose family having accepted the Government of India version regarding Netaji’s death in air crash on August 18, 1945.

Author quotes Nirad Chaudhury who, author informs, was a secretary to Sharat Chandra Bose, and whose niece married one of his sons in 1957; he quotes Nirad Chaudhury, as told to a journalist at the author's home at Oxford, on Shishir Bose, and says that the words of the famous author denouncing those in Bose family, who were encashing their famous relative, included the author's on niece Krishna.

Author quotes a letter from Amiya Nath Bose and his brothers Ashoke and Subrata, informing PM VP Singh about their father Sharat Chandra Bose having met associates of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, General Zaman Kiani, Colonel Habibur Rahman and Colonel Gulzara Singh, at the Bose residence, and having heard them, rejected the air crash story.

Author mentions Sharmila Bose being praised on Pakistani forums, because she said something against India regarding 1971 independence war of Bangladesh.

Author questions why she, who dismisses pakistani atrocities in East Bengal as propaganda, and her immediate relatives, all of whom including her are associated with illustrious academic institutionsin UK and US, demand disclosure of information on 1971, but not on their own close relative, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

Author exposes unfair charges by Sugata Bose against Justice Mukherjee at length.

................................................................................................

Author deals next with question relating Netaji’s daughter and her position. He mentions that Indian Ambassador in Germany met her on March 2, 1998, after her mother’s passing away. This was a few years after her mother’s having repulsed efforts by a similar government of India messenger to obtain her consent to bring ashes from Renkoji temple to India.

Author discusses a claim in footnotes of Sugata Bose’s book that Anita Bose had consented to bringing a part of ashes back and they were in Calcutta; this was shortly before Mukherjee Commission report was presented in Parliament. This portion of ashes had been kept by Ramamurti, a procedure conducted on sly, due to its evoking horror in Japan. Government of India, when questioned, denied any knowledge thereof regarding this partial transfer of ashes from Japan.

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April 22, 2022 - April 23, 2022.

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................................................................................................

IV: Was Subhas Bose a war criminal?

................................................................................................

Author begins with a question by Thevar to Shah Nawaz Khan, who sent him out to deliberate with foreign office official before calling him back, only to say that government of India did not know; this enraged Thevar, whoo rightly retorted asking why he should cooperate with a government that lacked power to protect its citizens.

Author next mentions a query by Indian people to UN in 1997, answered by Tharoor on behalf of Kofi Annan, that UN lacked the power to remove a name from a list by member Nation.

................................................................................................

Another writer on the subject of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose has mentioned a US journalist of WWII era clamoring about Netaji’s being war criminal because "he killed Americans"; this should make all participants of US Civil War effectively War criminals, and so should the few hundred or so accused of murders in US every year, or at least those convicted; but in all fairness, the logic must extend beyond US victims, in which case UK war criminals list could be headed by George Washington. Then one could consider war criminals lists by Iraq and Afghanistan, after one by Vietnam.

This US journalist, Wagg, was rebuffed by an Indian journalist who pointed out facts contradicting his statements; Nehru too rebuffed the suggestion.

Author next goes into correspondence by the then British government of India from Wavell on, on the question. Home Member Mudie nixed the idea categorically in his response, regarding Netaji’s being war criminal. But Attlee Cabinet and US both differed.

Author goes further into question of whether his name was on such a list, and response from UK has been answered in negative.

Author lists several queries made to several authorities by several people, with responses being that his name isn't on such a list. But, he mentions, government of India hasn't responded if India signed a treaty to hand over such a person if the name were on the list.

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April 23, 2022 - April 23, 2022.

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................................................................................................

V. The land of conspiracy theories

................................................................................................

Author begins by pointing out that, unlike most commonly assumed, there are several other conspiracy theories, and begins by quoting speech of SB Chavan in Parliament attributing Rajiv Gandhi's death to a conspiracy, against an emerging leader of third world, behind the LTTE. He goes into the then common accusations during seventies by Congress against US and CIA.

................................................................................................

Not as surprising because a good many people, while acidic about faults of Jawaharlal Nehru, are still treating Gandhi as touchstone of virtue bordering on saintliness.

Whatever the truth about that, fact remains that, among other great things that can be said on the other side, it's also indubitably a fact that when Gandhi's consent and cooperation was needed and he could have set his terms, or at least held out, he made a mild gesture only, of asking for Bhagat Singh and others' sentences to be reconsidered, and when denied, promptly signed.

It's equally undeniable that after each massacre, Kerala, Noakhali or West Pakistan, he advised Hindus to suffer it without hatred, with love for those massacred them, but not flee; he in fact demanded that government of India force refugees to return, even if certain to be massacred, and meanwhile evicted in dead cold of midwinter on streets of Delhi from the only shelters they had found, old, women, children, babies and all, just so those muslims who had remained or returned could enjoy a feast - and not only this was done by police using sticks to beat the homeless refugees who had lost homes, homelands and far more, but then he joined those feasting for the celebration.

Author says that witness had no evidence. He should know that not all evidence is documented certification with notarised signatures.

................................................................................................

Author here mentions a "pre-independence story" as he terms it, according to which, Nehru received a letter from Netaji saying he was in Russia and would like to come home, via Himalayan region, and wanted his nephew, a son of Sharat Chandra Bose, to receive him at Chitral.

The more known story is one about Nehru sending a message to the then PM Attlee to the effect that he'd heard from Stalin that - he termed it "your war criminal" Subhash Chandra Bose - was in his custody.

Author quotes a part of a speech by Shashankashekhar Sanyal in Parliament to the effect that Mountbatten spoke to Nehru in Burma asking who would be PM if Subhash Chandra Bose returned to India; which then had Nehru agree to partition.

Author here does quote the story about Nehru communicating with Attlee about Stalin's message.

Author goes into the 1956 visit by Attlee, including to Calcutta and Lucknow; in former, when asked about why British left, he said it was due to Bose, not Gandhi"; in Lucknow, when the then CM Sampurnanand spoke with him, he mentioned Bose being in Russia; this CM was in contact with Bhagwanji.

Author discusses Subramanian Swamy having spoken about Nehru’s message to Attlee.

................................................................................................

Next section of the chapter, startlingly, is titled to say that there was a link between deaths of Bose and Shastri.

Author, after going into questions raised by manner of death of Shastri, quotes Jagdish Kodesia to the effect that Shastri never believed in Bose dying in air crash, that he wanted a fresh investigation after he'd become PM, and more.

................................................................................................

Author next goes into whether Vijaylaxmi Pandit and Radhakrishnan, two first ambassadors of India to USSR, knew of presence of Bose in Russia.

There's further discussion on this, from various angles.

................................................................................................

Next section title startles - it's about Netaji’s being seen next to Nehru’s bier, and there's a photograph. It's a lookalike, but clearly not him, and author identifies him as a Cambodian monk.

................................................................................................

And the last section remains the most startling, terrifying and worrisome, even if it hadn't been mirrored in a recent similar tragedy.

Author speaks of Khosla telling Chakravarti to ask a witness, whom Chakravarti was asking if there was a fear of a coup, if it involved Netaji, and Khosla asked this repeatedly.

But then author recounts a helicopter crash in Gulpur, J&K, killing over half a dozen top brass of Western Command. This was the same day that John F Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, incidentally.

Strangely enough, whrn questions were immediately raised in Parliament, the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru categorically denied any conspiracy, and said it must have been a wire that the helicopter got entangled in, although there were no survivors and no investigation had been carried out.

The recent similar crash only differed in specific location and victims. And in another important respect - the then victims' bodies, he says, were badly sliced and mutilated, although the copter had crashed only 150 feet.

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April 23, 2022 - April 23, 2022.

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................................................................................................

VI. The men who kept the secrets

................................................................................................

Author begins by recounting hus meet with Pradip Bose, who says he pleaded for years with his brother, Aurobindo Bose, to tell him about the night he, and his cousin Dwijendra Nath Bose, helped Netaji escape; but Aurobindo never did tell.

Author says it takes him time to realise what this means - Netaji had made them promise they'd say only what, and only as much as, he'd told them to, and no more. And they didn't.

Netaji realised that while the family had some clue that he'd escape, he'd constructed an elaborate drama with only two or three youngsters in the know, that he'd left on 17th January; Aurobindo was the only one allowed in his seclusion to bring him food and until 25th said nothing about him being gone, as instructed. On 26th he raised a cry about his being not there,

The British tortured Dwijedranath Bose in Lahore fort for several days and got nothing out of him, author recounts.

Aurobindo never varied from the version agreed on - that Subhash Chandra Bose had been there until 25th night.

So the family knew the air crash story was just another escape, elaborately planned.

Author recounts interactions between Habibur Rahman and intimate relatives of Netaji, who realised Habibur Rahman was in the same position about air crash that Dwijedranath Bose and Aurobindo had been when Netaji had escaped.

Author ends the book with a short history of Habibur Rahman, who left for Pakistan.

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April 23, 2022 - April 23, 2022.

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................................................................................................

India's biggest cover-up

Kindle Edition

by Anuj Dhar

(Author)

Format: Kindle Edition

................................................

April 10, 2022 -

April 19, 2022 - April 23, 2022.

Purchased April 11, 2022.

Publisher: ‎Anuj Dhar (17 June 2012)

Language: English

448 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

This edition

Format 448 pages,

Kindle Edition

Published January 1, 2012

by Anuj Dhar

Language English

India’s biggest cover-up.

ASIN:- B008CDVRWW

................................................

................................................................................................

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4659862148

................................................................................................

ASIN:- B008CDVRWW

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Saturday, April 23, 2022

India's Biggest Cover-up; by Anuj Dhar.

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