Netaji files: Kin may move SC on declassification

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s kin, preparing to meet the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 17, may go to the Supreme Court with a public interest litigation (PIL), seeking the declassification of secret files on Bose, in government custody.

“We will first give Modi a chance to declassify the files since he has already formed an  inter-ministerial committee. We will ask him to place the committee under a sitting Supreme Court judge since, she/he carries power. We want to know what happened to Bose after 1945 (air crash). The panel should take off from where the Mukherjee Commission left the investigation into Bose’s death”, Netaji’s family spokesperson Chandra Kumar Bose told Millennium Post.

The Mukherjee Commission report, which said that Netaji did not die in the 1945 air crash in Taiwan, was summarily dismissed by the Government of India. 

However, the Bose family believes, “My grandfather Sarat Chandra Bose met crash survivor and eyewitness Habibur Rehman and interrogated him about Bose’s disappearance in 1945 for hours. Rehman said he had suffered burns, but his uniform and burn marks were suspected. We feel that Netaji had instructed Rehman to say that he died in the crash (a decoy)”, said Bose, preparing the family agenda for the meeting with Modi.

Bose, along with his daughter Chitra Ghosh, will attend the meeting. About 10 family members will meet the PM in New Delhi. 

“We suspect that the crucial files, leading to the mysterious disappearance of Netaji post 1945 may have been destroyed. Only a  sitting judge can retrieve the relevant documents on Netaji from the KGB and MI. Did he really go to Russia?” added Bose. 

Chandra Kumar Bose’s brother Surya Bose recently met with Modi in Germany and demanded the declassification of the embargoed files on Netaji.