Mystery of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose's reported death, some hidden facts.. "The demand for declassification of all secret Netaji files must come from Bengal first," says writer of a new controversial book on Netaji mystery "India's biggest cover-up"...

A new book on the mystery surrounding Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s reported death and survival for decades afterwards is causing a flutter in social as well as mainstream media.  New Delhi-based independent researcher, Anuj Dhar has piled up freshly uncovered facts and insights in his book “India’s biggest cover-up”. What makes the book stands apart from any other book published in India in last few years is that it uses over 200 images to supplement its engrossing narrative. Some 90 of these images, according to Dhar, come from still secret Government of India records.

Dhar, who is not a Bengali, has spent more than a decade in making sense of the vexed issue and had obtained information from the Taiwan government ruling out the alleged air crash which supposedly killed the tallest national leader from Bengal. In his book, Dhar invalidates the air crash theory, supports the view that Netaji escaped to the former Soviet Union with Japanese help, and, surprisingly, details a most interesting "dead man" angle.

In an interaction with “Ma Mati Manush-Blog” ( http://mamatimanushofwb.blogspot.com/ ), Anuj recalls that a strange thing happened in 2007 when he and his friends were in the middle of an RTI quest to seek release of over 200 secret records used by the Khosla Commission to support the official theory of Netaji's reported death in Taiwan at the close of WWII. The Ministry of Home Affairs was refusing to declassify them and the Information Commissioner A N Tiwari (later Chief Information Commissioner) was left with no option but to ask them point blank why it could not be done.

After a while, Tiwari, a former Secretary to the Government of India, received a letter from his friend, the then Home Secretary. The letter was marked "Secret" but Tiwari, says Dhar, could hardly conceal his sense of bafflement after going through it.  “He told us that the Home Secretary was not in favour of the disclosure of the records because doing so would ‘may lead to a serious law and order problem in the country, especially in West Bengal’.”

“What is the meaning of all this?” Anuj Dhar asks.

In the last few days Dhar has posted many disturbing details on his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/anujdhar) leading to much discussion on the social media on an issue that has disturbed generations of Indians, not just Bengalis, over the decades.  In one of his posts, he discusses a 2001 story from Hindustan Times.

The story claimed that “an Indian Ambassador was allowed to meet” Netaji in Russia “on the condition that he would not try to speak to him”. When the Ambassador wondered about what to do in case Netaji wished to speak to him, "he was told that it has been taken care of".

Dhar presses that Hindustan Times, where he was employed earlier, is a respected national daily, not a tabloid linked to Forward Bloc or RSS. “This report proves how deeply this issue is felt everywhere.”

According to Dhar  “this ambassador was Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan” who on his return from Moscow “became India's first Vice-President and then President”.  Two more quotes from the story that Dhar highlights are quite shocking:

"But when a well-known researcher contacted Mikhael Gorbachev, the former (USSR) premier evaded a direct answer, and is alleged to have said it was up to both governments (Russia and India) to solve the issue once and for all."

"A former head of the Foreign Security Service (the old KGB) has indicated to a prominent researcher that files in Russian archives do contain detailed information -- but the onus is on the Indian Government to show more interest."

Relying on his own research, Dhar in other posts tells the story of Netaji’s plan to escape to the USSR, the only country which could have harboured him in post-world war period. The following record reproduced by him has been taken from National Archives in New Delhi and gives details of an Intelligence Bureau report based on a Japanese official speaking about the Russia plan.

Another document from the same archive posted by Dhar talks about an intelligence report about Mahatma Gandhi speaking about Netaji’s remaining alive.

Dhar tells us ( http://mamatimanushofwb.blogspot.in/ ) that he does not live in past and his book “is as much about present”. “the Mukherjee Commission report came out in 2006 not 1947,” he says. He says that “in 2012 if there's any issue concerning Netaji that requires our urgent attention, it is of the inexplicable state secrecy around him”.  He says that there are “heaps of classified records and files relating to Netaji lying in different ministries and agencies of Government of India”. He asks:  “I do not think apart from Netaji any other pre-Independence national icon of ours has had the dubious distinction of having so much of classified material about him.”

Referring to claims that there are records about Netaji in secret Russian archives, he asks, “How are we going to ask foreign governments to release them when our own is sitting on a pile of its own making?”  He gives further details about secret records that would leave anyone astonished.

“Just to give you an illustration, the Prime Minister's Office is holding 35 classified files on Netaji. Most of these files are about the reported death. Nearly 10 of the PMO's Netaji files carry the "Top Secret" stamp. The situation is more or less the same across the government. The Ministry of Home Affairs is holding secret thousands of pages about Netaji's fate. This has got to be joke because most "enlightened" people of the country--senior journalists and eminent Bengali thinkers included --have made up their minds that the Bose mystery is just gas.

“But gas it surely is not. The Ministry of External Affairs has secret files about Netaji and so has the Intelligence Bureau, some 76 of them. In fact, only a former DIB can actually tell how many files are there exactly and where they have been kept. That is such a shame, you would say. Yes, that is, and this is precisely the issue our generation must confront before it's too late. Those before us failed miserably for a variety of reasons.”

You may also get the book online.

Flipkart: http://goo.gl/f0LCu

E-edition for those outside India:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008CDVRWW

Note: This “Ma Mati Manush” blog firmly believe that mystery related to Netaji should be solved and personally I believe that Neheru-Gandhi family leaded Congress don’t want to allow public to know the real fact..

Also not only Congress but also Indian Communists are also betrayed with Netaji and if they stood behind Netaji during his fight our Indian history would have been different and we may get a bigger India from Burma (Mayanmar) to Afganisthan..

Earlier I have written a post in this blog in context of Netaji & Indian communists, readers are requested to read that also.. link:

http://mamatimanushofwb.blogspot.in/2011/01/netaji-subhas-chandra-bose-had-his.html

Please see other posts in this blog page by clicking "Home" or from "Popular Posts" / "Archives" sections, and if any remarks plaese post. Thanks & Vande Mataram!! Saroop Chattopadhyay.