CROPPER THIS REPORT'S AN EYE-OPENER!

June 20, 2008 by vinayras

Be warned of the official spin! Mukehrjee Commission's report has blown up in Government\s face, and they are trying to circumvent it.

April 12, 2006

Debating points | Anuj Dhar

An interesting thing happened in August 1956. One month before the Shah Nawaz Khan Committee report was to be made public, its findings were leaked out in a leading Kolkata daily that had been giving good coverage to the Netaji mystery. The pinch of the story "Netaji died in a Formosa (Taiwan) hospital" was felt by Suresh Chandra Bose, the dissident member of the committee, who aggrievedly shot a letter to Shah Nawaz and CCed it to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

Suresh Bose (See The guilty men of India) reminded Shah Nawaz of his words in the presence of Nehru: "All Government of India enquiries are done secretly and only reports are made public." The Prime Minister had agreed and added that the committee members "should avoid even informal talks on this subject with others who might give the information to the press." Citing this, Suresh Bose accused Shah Nawaz of "deliberately" disobeying Nehru's instruction.

The answer came not from Shah Nawaz, but Prime Minister himself, defending Shah Nawaz, who was to be elevated to ministerial ranks after his report was publicised. "I … find it difficult to understand what you have written," Nehru made light of Suresh's charge. He wrote that the leak "was some kind of an intelligent guess by some reporter or some clerk in our office here. Obviously, the Chairman of the Enquiry Committee (Shah Nawaz) had nothing to do with it".

Last week, we saw another "intelligent guess", if I may paraphrase the former Prime Minister, in Hindustan Times. Guess we ought to thank the unnamed "top official" in the Home Ministry, which has the custody of Justice Mukherjee's report slated to be presented in Parliament a month from now. The substance of the news report -- sardonically titled "Dead or alive: Netaji Commission report comes a cropper" -- was that Justice Mukherjee's report had turned out to be a "damp squib" as it had failed to ascertain when and how Netaji had died, and, therefore, the Government had nothing to act upon.

Well, Mission Netaji had been expecting it. Both the Government's reaction and some sort of leak in media to discredit the obvious heretical findings of a judicial inquiry into India's biggest cover-up. What the officials described to the unsuspecting HT reporter as a "damp squib" is actually a slap on the Government's face. In 2006, the people of India aren't actually awaiting the return of Subhas Chandra Bose. The point now is, if Netaji did not die in Taiwan, as Justice Mukherjee seems to be concluding, why the Government of India was peddling the plane crash theory in the face of the contradicting evidence? What in the world made Shah Nawaz Khan and GD Khosla churn out that they did? Under whose dictate, under what sinister conspiracy were those frauds played on the nation?

That is, the charges of a massive highest-level cover-up will stick, afterall. The Commission's report would rip open the proverbial can of worms. And the first one to emerge would speak of the shameful role our government, including the Home Ministry whose officials gave the dope to the Hindustan Times reporter, has played in the affair. Don't believe me? Consider the following. The tip of the iceberg has already been exposed.

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