BALASORE: The death mystery of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose fails to die down. Months after the Central Government made the documents related to disappearance of Indian National Army commander public, a group of activists and researchers on Saturday claimed that the ‘mysterious’ man present during the historical Tashkent declaration between India and Pakistan in Russia in 1966 was none other than Netaji.
Armed with a Forensic Face Mapping report, ‘Mission Netaji’, which has been engaged in solving the mystery, urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take up the matter with Russian President Vladimir Putin when he meets him next week. The 62-page imagery analysis report has been prepared by UK-based facial mapping and height analysis expert Neil Millar. Members of the organisation had submitted video and photographic evidence on Netaji to Millar, who has found noticeable similarities in the facial features including ears, eyes, forehead, nose, lips and chin of Netaji and the Tashkent man.
“If the photographs and video footage are true, then it certainly nullifies the Bose death theory that he died in an air crash in Taihoku on August 18, 1945, which the Congress-led government in India had been claiming for the last 70 years,” said Balasore-based researcher Dharmendra Panda, a founder member of Mission Netaji.
In the imagery analysis report, Millar, a member of the work group for the Forensic Imagery Analysis Group (FIAG), claimed that the man seen during the Tashkent declaration and Netaji share very similar facial features and could potentially be one and the same person.
Panda said Millar was commissioned for the report by Dutch national of Indian origin Siddhartha Satbhai, a software professional and member of Mission Netaji, which was formed in 2005 to unearth the truth behind his mysterious death.
The Tashkent declaration is a peace agreement that was signed between India and Pakistan in the aftermath of the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965. The peace talks took place on January 10, 1966 at Tashkent in the then USSR with Russian Premier Alexei Kosygin mediating between Indian prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and Pakistan president Muhammad Ayub Khan. Shastri died under mysterious circumstances a few hours after the signing of the Tashkent declaration.