100 declassified files do not unravel Netaji mystery: Experts

Netaji experts and a few members of his family in Kolkata are disappointed, since the 100 files declassified by the Narendra Modi government on Saturday have not revealed anything new about Netaji’s disappearance and alleged death by plane crash in August, 1945.

“Maybe the declassification of intelligence files, belonging to the IB, CBI and RAW, in the possession of the Union government may bring new facts on Bose’s death to light,” said Abhijit Roy, grandson of Sarat Chandra Bose, Netaji’s elder brother. Roy attended four public programmes in Kolkata on Netaji’s birth anniversary, January 23, but stayed away from the declassification programme at the National Archives of India in New Delhi on Saturday.

Another famous Netaji researcher and ex-professor of International relations, Jadavpur University, Purabi Roy feels that British and Russian intelligence files, when declassified, may provide some clues on Netaji’s activities post 1945 but the released file reveal nothing on the subject. 

“The Indian PM went to Russia recently and requested the Russian PM, Putin, to declassify KGB documents on Bose. We hope Putin will oblige. Also, the British MI5 and MI6 files should provide some clues as to Bose’s whereabouts after 1945. Cracking those secret foreign documents is the real challenge,” Roy told Millennium Post.

There are about 70 intelligence files in the possession of the central government which may perhaps offer clues on Bose’s mysterious disappearance after the Taihoku plane crash in 1945 which “officially” caused his death.

The files released on Bose apparently unveil a letter written by Suresh Chandra Bose, Netaji’s brother, to the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, that he believed that Netaji did not die in the 1945 air crash. “Nehru apparently wrote back that there was circumstantial evidence to the contrary. Why were these crucial letters not revealed by the Government earlier?” asks Ray.

Suresh Chandra Bose a member of the Shah Nawaz Committee (1956) investigating Netaji's death had also submitted a dissention report that he did not believe that Netaji died in the 1945 air crash.

Other members also believe that since there was snooping by government intelligence agencies on the Bose family even 40 years after Independence, Bose must have been alive post-1945.