Subhash Chandra Bose not killed in air crash

An aide of Netaji was about to disclose the truth but his voice was suppressed. Even after release of hundreds of  documents, mystery remains. It will remain a mystery for ever.

In the absence of official documents so far kept under lock and key by the successive governments, we have no authentic information about what happened to Netaji Subhash Chandre Bose on August 18, 1945 or thereafter. Researchers and enquiry commissions have been relying on secondary sources and circumstantial evidence and coming to contradictory conclusions. Contrary to the views of the Shanawaz Committee and the Khosla Commission that Netaji was killed in the plane crash, the Mukhrejee Commission was of the view that the news of his death August 18 was fake because he had planned to escape to the Soviet Union. The members of the Bose clan, barring perhaps only Netaji’s great grandnephew and Trinamul Congress MP Sugata Bose, agree with the Mukhrejee Commission. Sugata Bose recently told a newspaper correspondent that he was “convinced Netaji died in the plane crash.” On the other hand, there was a man called Abbas Ali (Jan 3, 1920 – October 11, 2014) who was Captain in the Indian National Army and had known Netaji closely, used to claim that he met Netaji at least 10 days after the alleged plane crash.

Perhaps, we will never know the truth but I am not writing this piece just to present contradictory opinions and claims. I am going to tell the readers about a write-up I had read in 1970s. I am writing this on the basis of my memory but what I had read was so  sensational that I can never forget it.

There used to be a popular weekly Hindi magazine Dharmyug. Its publication stopped in 1994. Sometime in 1970s I had read an article about Netaji in that magazine. At the end of the article there was a note by the editor that a man (perhaps Netaji’s cook) who had been interviewed had claimed that he was taken to the airport on that fateful day, August 18, 1945, where Netaji was present. The man further claimed that at the airport he was blindfolded and after some time he heard a loud noise as if something had exploded. The note further stated that the man made sensational disclosures which would be published next week. That never happened. There was no reference to that interview in any subsequent issue of the magazine. The only explanation one can think of is that the publication of that interview was banned by the authorities.

If any researcher wants to read that article, he will have to go through the old issues of the magazine in the 1970s. According to information available on Google search engine, the old issues are available with a few persons. I cannot say whether the manuscript of the unpublished second instalment would be available in the archives of the magazine.

Devendra Narain