KOLKATA: While the declassified West Bengal government files may not provide “conclusive” proof of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose being alive after 1945, researchers asserted that the documents reflect that even the Indian government post-Independence did not buy the “Taiwan plane crash” theory.
The nearly 13,000 pages of “secret” information that were made public on Friday reveal the extensive surveillance carried out on Netaji’s family members, particularly his elder brother Sarat Chandra Bose and nephews Sisir Kumar and Amiya Nath.
There are at least eight files on Sarat Bose alone, and two files on the nephews, giving details about how sleuths tracked their each and every movement.
From intercepting letters to and from their Kolkata residence to maintaining records of the meetings they attended and speeches made, the Bose family were constantly under the scanner particularly in the immediate post-Independence era.
Researchers and some Bose family members believe that the snooping was a result of the Indian government not buying the plane crash theory and believing that Netaji was still alive.
“There are more than a dozen instances of reports claiming Netaji to be dead before the August 18, 1945 plane crash. In fact in 1942, it was reported that he died in a plane crash,” researcher and author Jayanta Chowdhury said.
“So it is quite natural for the authorities, be it the British or the Indian, not to buy the Taihoku plane crash theory,” said Chowdhury, who deposed before the Justice MK Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry which in 2006 concluded that Bose did not die in the alleged air crash of 1945.
Corroborating Chowdhury’s claims is a document dated July 17, 1942 addressed to the home department, government of India, stating that “a newspaper Hindusthan Standard alone of all newspapers of Bengal which appeared definitely to discredit the news of Bose death in a plane crash”.
Chandrachur Ghose, founder member of “Mission Netaji” an organization spearheading the declassification campaign also opined that snooping on the Bose family was testament of the Indian government believing Netaji to be alive after 1945.
“The Justice Mukherjee Commission has already established that Netaji did not die in the plane crash. These classified files which reveal the extensive snooping only concretise the fact that the Nehru government too believed Netaji was alive,” Ghose said. Agencies
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