An initial look into the 64 confidential police files on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose made public on September 18 by the Mamata Banerjee Government tended to rubbish the so-called Taihoku plane crash theory on his death, reinforcing the view that he was alive even after 1945.
One of those files suggested that the freedom fighter was alive even after his alleged disappearance from Taihoku. Not only this, some of the letters tend to suggest that some people were apprehensive of Bose’s reappearance on the Indian political horizon. As a result of this, all the Kolkata-bound communiqués of Bose’s kin were either intercepted en route or thoroughly scrutinised before being delivered.
This suspicion arises from a letter written to Sarat Chandra Bose, himself a great freedom fighter and elder brother of Netaji, by Dr L Abegg, a Swiss Intelligence official. This letter was intercepted by the Kolkata Police.
The letter from Abegg dated December 3, 1949 and addressed to Sarat Chandra Bose at his 1 Woodburn Park residence, said that Netaji was alive in 1946. The Swiss spy also wrote that the information was not procured from the US or Soviets but from some Japanese Intelligence sources. One such letter from Abegg contains assertions that Netaji had not died in any air crash.
The Swiss person’s letter that never reached the elder Bose was pinched by the police from the Elgin Road Post Office post-1949 giving sufficient hints that even after India’s Independence and even after the widely bandied story of Netaji’s sad “death” in the Taihoku crash his whereabouts was being tracked, an exercise that Bose’s grand-nephew Chandra Kumar Bose calls the “biggest ever cover-up in Indian history.” Following the release of the files by the West Bengal Government, a group of Bose’s family members are
likely to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi next month and request him to declassify the 150-plus files preserved with the Centre.
Meanwhile, former Trinamool MP Krishna Bose, the wife of Sisir Bose, who had driven Netaji to Gomoh Junction during his phenomenal flight from India, said, “One should not jump to a bigger conclusion based on police files only.”
The Bengal Government on Friday declassified 64 such police files which would now be kept at the Kolkata Police Museum for public viewing.
“One such file that was key to Netaji’s movements after 1945 till 1968, was destroyed in the year 1972 by then Bengal Chief Minister SS Ray at the behest of late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi,” said ChandraKumar Bose.
He said he could only see the cover page of the file and “the remaining portions were mischievously destroyed by the traitors.” He demanded a full-fledged enquiry into the disappearance of this file as also the role of Indira Gandhi, Bengal Chief Ministers BC Roy and SS Ray.
Referring to some “files in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO)” which contained discussions on “so-called death or disappearance of Netaji” as per British Intelligence reports of 1956 he said: “The PMO files contained correspondence between Nehru and BC Roy on the so-called ashes of Netaji. This must be probed thoroughly.”
He added he had come to know from British Intelligence reports on how Viceroys Atlee and Mountbatten had conceded to the fact that the British had fought their fiercest-ever battle with the Azad Hind Fauj. “But for the big INA putsch and the reverses that the British suffered they would have lingered on for some more years in this country,” Chandra Kumar Bose said quoting from British and US Intelligence reports.
Mamata Banerjee quoted from some files she went through saying there were indeed references to Netaji’s movements well beyond the 1950s. “Though it is difficult for anyone to go through so many files in a single day, it is found in some places that he was seen in more than one place. This should be probed,” she said making a circuitous reference to the destruction of a Netaji file that Chandra Kumar Bose referred to.
“Not all files can be burnt and even if you burn those files someone, somewhere, might have kept a copy of these files which will soon come out,” she said, urging the Centre to declassify the files as “I have done whatever was within my capacity and now it is on the Centre to do its bit.”
The files are voluminous, about 12,750 pages, often extremely hard to decipher, and it may take some time before clarity on the vexed question of Bose’s disappearance emerges. But surveillance on Bose’s kin long after his purported “death” is established by the disappearance of a letter written by his wife Emilie Schenkl to Sarat Chandra Bose.
The letter dated December 19, 1949 was intercepted by the police. Finally it landed in Kolkata Police’s “confidential” files. Meanwhile, a group of Bose’s family members were likely to meet PrimeMinister Narendra Modi next month, Chandra Bose said, adding in the meeting the family would request him to declassify the150-plus files preserved with the Centre so that “real traitors and false gods of Indian freedom struggle are indentified.”
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