KOLKATA:Several former officials of the Intelligence Bureau and the Research & Analysis Wing on Tuesday demanded that the Centre soon make public the files on Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. They stressed he did not die in an air crash and alleged a suppression of facts by former Congress governments at the Centre.
In a letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, under an umbrella organistaion, Patriots’ Forum, they wrote, “The third commission of inquiry clearly stated that Netaji did not die in a plane crash on August 18, 1945 at Taihoku near Japan and the ashes kept at the Renkoji Temple did not belong to him. “The sentiments are so strong that no government had the courage to bring the ashes to India. We are, however, told that the present President of India, Pranab Mukherjee had toyed with that idea once during one of his ministerial roles but had to back out in right time,” former Special Director, IB revealed.
The sleuths also revealed that when former Supreme Court judge Monoj Kumar Mukherjee, who headed the third commission of inquiry wrote to the PMO, the Cabinet Secretariat and Ministry of Home Affairs for some vital “missing documents”, he was indirectly threatened. They told the PM that “a certain deputy secretary wrote back to him (Mukherjee) not to waste their time and restrain his ardour.”
The former sleuths told the PM in their letter, “Both the Congress and the then government at the Centre had made crude efforts to confuse the nation regarding the circumstances and the place of Netaji’s death. Indeed, so sloppy has been this effort that only after the third Commission of Inquiry submitted its report as late as November 7, 2005, was it finally confirmed with scientific evidence that he didn’t die in that plane crash.”
Demanding that the present Central government declassify some files at least, they alleged that the UPA-I government led by former Prime Manmohan Singh, after receiving the report within three days, outrightly rejected it without a discussion in Parliament. They pointed out that the Mukherjee commission had recorded: “It appeared that some power was working in the Government of India which clearly swept off all documents that produced any evidence negating the conclusions arrived at by Shah Nawaz and Khosla Commissions.”
Former West Bengal DGP Nirupam Shome, who is also the grand nephew of Netaji wrote: “Whether he died in a plane crash at Taihoku in 1945 or in 1956 in a prison at Omsk in South-western Siberia should be examined by the team.”