INDIA BUSINESS WORLD - MAY 2006
THE MONTH THAT WAS...

GOVT. REJECTS REPORT ON NETAJI DEATH

THE mystery over the death of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose deepened on Wednesday with the M K Mukherjee Commission inferring that he did not die in a plane crash in 1945 and the government rejecting the finding.

 The government also rejected the commission's contention that the ashes in Renkoji Temple in Japan were not that of Bose. The development should satisfy the Forward Bloc, which has been opposed to any suggestion that the Netaji had died in the plane crash.

The Mukherjee Commission, whose report was tabled in Lok Sabha on Wednesday, concluded that Bose “is dead”, but “he did not die in the plane crash, as alleged”, and “the ashes in the Japanese temple are not of Netaji.

The views of the government, which gave no reason for rejection of the commission report, were given in an Action Taken Report (ATR) tabled along with the three-volume report. The ATR said the government had examined the commission's report submitted to it on November 8 last year “in detail and has not agreed with the findings”.

The commission was set up by the previous NDA government in 1999 to inquire into the circumstances concerning departure of Bose from Bangkok in August 1945, his reported death in an air crash and subsequent developments connected therewith.

In its findings, the commission said in the absence of any clinching evidence to prove that ‘Bhagwanji-Gumnami Baba' was Netaji, the question whether he (Netaji) died in Faizabad (in Uttar Pradesh) on September 16, 1985 as testified by some of the witnesses, need not be answered.

The commission rejected various versions about Netaji's death including that he was murdered at the Red Fort in New Delhi on August 15, 1945. On his death in a plane crash, it said it stood established that Netaji succeeded in evading the Allied Force (of World War II) on August 17, 1945 after emplaning at Saigon (in Vietnam) and escaping out of their reach.

 “As a camouflage thereof, the entire makebelief story of the air crash, Netaji's death therein and his cremation was engineered by the Japanese army authorities, including two doctors and Habibur Rahman (a colleague of Netaji) and then aired on August 23, 1945,” the report said.