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TIME LINE
June 22, 2006
Sayantan Dasgupta of Mission Netaji
(MN) seeks from Home Ministry (MHA) the copies of exhibits used by
Khosla & Shah Nawaz panels to support official air crash theory.
June 30, 2006
Ministry flatly denies the information, saying it isn't in national interest.
October 2006
In first hearing before Central
Information Commission (CIC), MHA officials feign ignorance about any such exhibits or lists. CIC tells MN to specified
documents.
November 2006
MN furnishes a secret list of 202 exhibits
used by Khosla Commission and cites reference to exhibits used by Shah Nawaz panel.
December 2006
Home Secretary writes a secret letter to CIC saying that release will lead to law and order problem.
The matter is referred to the full Bench of
CIC.
July 2007
CIC Bench upholds MN's argument that MHA did not
demonstrate any valid ground for denying information. MHA is directed to release the
202 documents.
November
2007
Home Minister takes the matter to
Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs for clearance.
December 2007
MHA makes a selective disclosure. 91 out of 202 specified records are released. There is no word on the rest.
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Vox Populi
Orkut: MN - The true story
of Bose
Blogger: Justice
for Subhas
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Get to know Netaji
Mystery
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Other RTI cases
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After
one and half years of RTI efforts which led to a landmark Central Information Commission
decision and discussions among the highest echelons of power in the country,
the Ministry of Home Affairs has released to Mission Netaji 91 documents relating to the mystery surrounding the death of Subhas Chandra Bose.
The MHA had earlier said it could not provide Bose-related records, with
the Union Home Secretary himself expressing fears that disclosure could lead to law and order problem in the country -- especially in Bose's home state West Bengal.
That certain classified documents should be released under the fledgling right to information regime makes for
a good news in secrecy-obsessive India, but
there are no more glad tidings. The MHA's disclosure appears to be
selective, with too many missing links.
One look and it would appear as though the Ministry has given away it all: British and American intelligence reports, diplomatic correspondence and assessments of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri -- but there's more than what meets the eye. The documents do have some interesting revelations (see box below) but quite nothing of the sort that could cause any commotion, least of all in communist-infested
Bengal.
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Highlights from the records released by
Ministry of Home Affairs
* Japanese officers told British interrogators they feared that Bose "would be more harshly treated than anyone else if he fell into allied hands" and that "he was to get to the Russians".
* Indians in SE Asia thought Bose "has probably managed to evade Japanese control and has made his way to some place occupied by the Russians".
* Allied intelligence organisation CSDIC suggested the line that records be searched in Taiwan to verify the otherwise believable story given out by
Japanese and Bose's ADC Habibur Rahman Khan.
* Inquiries in Taiwan were finally made in 1956 by British but
its findings were suppressed up by the Government and GD
Khosla, whose report is now being touted as superior to that Justice Mukherjee by the Congress-led government.
* Prime Minister Nehru denied that he had received any report about Subhas in USSR or his sister Vijay Lakshmi
Pandit met him there. He also squashed rumors that there was some secret protocol to hand over Bose to any foreign nation. British Government too denied that Bose's name appeared in any British list of war criminals.
* Nehru was against inquiring into the matter in early 1950s because he thought there was abundance of convincing evidence that Bose had died.
However, in his latter days he felt that though there was no direct proof of Bose's death, he should be taken for dead because he had not returned to India. Lal Bahadur Shastri seemed in agreement.
* IB boss BN Mullik informed PMO that a propaganda was started in 1962 that Subhas Bose was coming along with the Chinese army.
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The suspicious
part is that out of 202 documents that Mission Netaji could somehow specify, only
91 have
been released. One paper -- a 1956 note by Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru -- is going to remain classified in national interest. There is no word about the rest
110 -- including Home Ministry, External Affairs Ministry
files; letters from Home Minister, High Commissioner, Taiwan Government and Intelligence Bureau
head; a report on
treasure said to have been lost along with Bose and a memo from Director of Military Intelligence
over Mahatma Gandhi's view on the matter.
These papers are said to be "unavailable", which means, would you believe, they cannot be
traced in the repository of classified records in high security
"T Section" of the Internal Security Division of the MHA in North Block. A layman's version though would be that they
must have been destroyed.
However, the contention that historic and politically important records
just cannot go missing or be destroyed is
reinforced by the Manual of Office Procedure, which strictly calls for permanent preservation of such records, and statements certain officials have made to Mission Netaji. In addition to this, Mission Netaji has irrefutable evidence that the Ministry of Home Affairs has been
quite meticulous in maintaining records pertaining to Khosla Commission (1970-1974),
which have yielded the 90 documents. Such is the level of
safekeeping that even the file of peon
attached to the commission,
attendance register, papers concerning loss of tray, telephone rent bill register and register showing purchases of newspapers etc have been
immaculately preserved till date.
The worrying bit is that certain details about some
of the "unavailable" records are known. For instance,
the 1952
correspondence between AM Sahay, Bose's diplomatic aide who rose
to be an ambassador in free India, and Foreign Secretary Subimal Dutt has Sahay insisting
that India seeks certain
explanation from the Japanese about what he calls "the whole
show" of Netaji's death. Sahay wrote to Dutt
that 2 days before Bose reportedly died, he sent him a letter: "He
(Bose) suggested that although Soviets had declared war against the Japanese, it would be desirable to be arrested by the Soviet authorities in Manchuria because we could later negotiate with them and might persuade them to accept us as their friends and not enemies."
It is simply baffling that the
Government should loose the entire Sahay-Dutt correspondence.
The
"unavailable" records about an inquiry that the
British made in Taiwan at the behest of Government of India in
1956 have since become available in the National Archives,
London. The British/Taiwanese reports indicated that there were
no records in Taiwan to prove Bose's death. In fact the witnesses cited by the Indian Government
had "either
died, disappeared or knew nothing". While 6 copies of these reports
were given to MEA in 1956, nothing was heard
of them in the days of Nehru. They were given to his
pal GD Khosla and therefore appear in the list of 202 records
sought by Mission Netaji. Khosla made no mention of them in his questionable report. Justice Mukherjee
discovered them in
London and used them to discard the Taiwan death
theory.
On Mission Netaji's part, Sayantan Dasgupta has conveyed to the MHA that the CIC
decision has not been "fully complied with" and
sought details about the 110 records. The Ministry's attention has been
drawn to a recent CIC direction regarding documents
reported missing by another ministry.
"A number of documents, which are held in public trust by the Department, have been admitted to have been mislaid. Simply stating that these are untraceable is not adequate excuse. If indeed, as suspected by the complainant, the files have actually been purloined this will amount to serious criminal act and its non-recovery a breach of trust on the part of the public authority. The Ministry ... will, therefore, immediately lodge a First Information Report (FIR) with the nearest Police Station to initiate criminal action against those responsible for this theft/loss."
During the CIC hearing in June, Mission Netaji had apprehended willful destruction of
documents relating to Bose's death. Ministry officials had then described the charge as "only a conjecture".
Background to the case
The documents had
been sought in June last year when Sayantan Dasgupta of Mission
Netaji requested the MHA to "make available authenticated
copies of documents used as exhibits by the Shah Nawaz Khan and
GD Khosla panels". The idea was to
better the understanding about the conclusions drawn by them.
Shah Nawaz Khan,
a one time INA man, was a Congress party MP when Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru appointed him the chairman of Netaji inquiry
committee in 1956. Justice GD Khosla, a friend of Nehru's,
authored a eulogistic book on Prime Minister Indira Gandhi while
he disposed off the Bose death probe in early 1970s. It was
alleged that both these panels worked along a premeditated line
that Netaji had died in a plane crash in Taipei.
Setting aside the
charges of foul play, the Government readily accepted the
reports of Shah Nawaz Khan and GD Khosla. Whereas, in 2005 it
arbitrarily dismissed the report of former Supreme Court judge
MK Mukherjee that this crash was actually a
camouflage of the Japanese military to help Netaji escape toward the
Soviet Russia.
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In a Top
Secret letter to Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in
1964, then Bengal Chief Minister PC Sen commented that
nothing further can be done in the matter of Bose's
death given the views of Pandit Nehru. |
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Mission Netaji
RTI case reached
the CIC when the MHA refused to give the
exhibits in the "interests of the State" and its "relation with foreign
State".
On June 5, 2007 the full
Bench of
the CIC comprising Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah and Information Commissioners Padma
Balasubramanian, AN Tiwari, Dr OP Kejariwal and Prof MM Ansari
hammered in that the matter was of "wide public concern and therefore of national importance".
Upholding Mission Netaji's stance, the CIC rejected the Home Ministry's "considered view" to not to
supply the documents.
"Any decision in this regard must factor in the changed transparency scenario after the advent of the RTI Act. Earlier, a public authority could bar any information from disclosure under the Official Secrets Act, simply by classifying the information as secret or top-secret. That option has been effectively excluded by the RTI Act... The decision to bar an information from disclosure can no more be arbitrary," the CIC
said in its order.
During the hearing, the
officials also made
a sensational disclosure that the MHA alone was holding documents
running into 70,000 pages over the vexed issue of Bose's death.
They conceded that "the decision concerning disclosure has to be taken at the highest
level".
Declaring the matter to be of "serious national importance", CIC directed the Ministry to release the
papers and thereby render
"an essential service to a public cause".
In late September-November 2007, Home Minister Shivraj Patil
took the matter to the Cabinet Committee on
Political Affairs. The CCPA is reported to have decided in favour of a release because they felt "the worst that the Congress-led coalition government may have to face was a controversy that would die a natural death."
Sample of documents
released under RTI
Document
1 (Click to download PDF file) Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) of the US army
questions Habibur Rahman in Tokyo on 29 September 1945 to get a lowdown on Bose's death. Rahman tells CIC that "on 16th August 1945 he accompanied Bose on a proposed trip Tokyo, Japan, to negotiate with the Japanese Government as to the disposition of the Indian National Army, but the plane in which they were riding crashed
(in Taipei on 18 August) and Bose was killed."
Text
(Click for text version)
Document
2 Intelligence Assault Unit (IAU) of the British army stumbles upon secret Japanese telegrams about the death of 'T', the code for
Bose. One gram states that Bose "while on his way to the capital (Tokyo), as a result of an accident to his aircraft at
Taihoku (Taipei) at 1400 hrs on the 18th, was seriously injured and died at midnight on the same date. His body has been flown to
Tokyo by the Formosan Army." The British officer who studied the
grams commented that "these messages were found in the ordinary files in their proper place".
In another document (Com 6) Intelligence Bureau comments that if
these telegrams "are part of a ... deception manoeuvre, this file of telegrams, along with numerous other documents, must have been purposely left where the British would find them."
Text
Document
3
Major Kiyoji Takayashi of Hikari Kikan, the Japanese military intelligence unit that liased with Bose's Government,
informs that after the receipt of telegrams Hikari boss Lt General
Saburo Isoda, in charge of Bose's last known movements, appeared to have "some doubts himself of the truth of the report of Bose's death". Report concludes that "proofs, if any, might be in Saigon".
Text
Document
4 At Saigon, Captain Yoshida of the Japanese Air Force tells IB Deputy Director W Davies that Bose "arrived by air from
Singapore on the 17th at 10.00 hrs and left the same day at 14.00 hrs … he did not disclose his intentions to anyone."
Davies reports that "the records of aircraft arrivals and departures have been destroyed".
He concludes that "the information given by this officer corroborates the other information available on
Bose's fate. The ultimate confirmation will be available only in
Formosa (Taiwan) or beyond."
Text
Document
5 Combined Defence Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC) as per this 7 January 1946 report seems to go by Habib's version. Habib (identified as B1269) expresses "baffled exasperation of current rumours and at Gandhi's statement to the effect that Bose is alive and in
hiding". However the report notes in the end that "for final and positive proof, a British investigation team would need to be sent up to Formosa from Saigon and Hanoi to examine the hospital records at
Taihoku."
Text
No report about any such British inquiry in Taihoku (Taipei)
is in public domain; but it is known that in May 1946
Intelligence Bureau took a serious look at the reports from Russian as well Indian sources that Bose was in USSR. The view of the Americans, who held sway in Taiwan and Japan at that time, was that there was "no direct evidence" of Bose's death.
The records and witnesses at Taihoku were later checked up in 1956
by the local authorities at the request of the British
Consulate, who had been approached by the Government of
India. It was done to assist the Shah Nawaz Committee, as is
clear from the following documents.
Document
6 is a Secret telegram that Indian Ambassador in Tokyo wrote to the Foreign Secretary Saibumal Dutt on May
1956. The Shah Nawaz Committee, at that time visiting Japan, felt it was "very desirable to pay a visit to Formosa". Sen wrote that "if this approach by the Committee is peremptorily dismissed the Committee will have a grievance which may make their whole report infructuous in the eyes of some sections of our people." Sen urged that the matter be placed before Prime Minister
Nehru.
Text
Document
7 TN Kaul of the MEA writes back to Sen on May 22 that the matter
has been "placed before Prime Minister". "We had made it clear to Committee in Delhi that it would not be practicable or advisable for them to visit Formosa," he
writes, adding "the only possible advantage of going there might have been to see entries in hospital registers." Kaul tells Sen that "at the Committee's request we had approached U.K. High Commission
here to get this information" and "we have considered the matter again and are not in favour of the Committee visiting Formosa."
Kaul levels charges against the Taiwanese that "they may put obstacles and suggest degrading conditions" and the whole episode will be politically "very embarrassing for us and might lead to complicating situations".
Text
Document
8 In a telegram dated May 24, Kaul informs Ambassador Sen that "U.K. High Commission have just informed us that their Consul in Taipeh has telegraphed that Formosan authorities are willing to allow 5 Chinese whose names were given by Committee to be examined by British Consul". He says that the High Commission was being reminded about "the entries in the Crematorium Register". Then he let loose further
baseless charges at the Taiwanese that "they may tutor their witnesses and make then give wrong statements which may only complicate the work of the Committee."
Text
The rest of the story is not
given out by the documents provided under RTI or the reports of the Khosla Commission and
Shah Nawaz Committee. The committee appears to have not waited for the completion of inquiries
in Taiwan. Contrary to the apprehension of Kaul, the Taiwanese were
quite considerate and helpful. On 11 August 1956 the
British High Commission gave the Ministry of External Affairs 6 copies of the report
sent by their Consul in Taiwan. On 11 September Prime Minister Nehru laid the report of Shah Nawaz Committee in Parliament. It supported the official view, and there was no mention of the
Taiwan inquiry initiated by the British Government. The High Commission's report was later seen
and ignored by GD Khosla. It figured among the documents sought by Mission Netaji
under the RTI. The Government of India did not provide this report to Justice
MK Mukherjee, who obtained it from the British archives and used it to contradict the air crash theory.
(See the main story above for details).
Document
9 The possibility that Bose
might have escaped to some secure place and not died while
flying to Tokyo, as the Japanese and Habibur Rahman gave out, is
supported by further interrogations. Colonel Yano Muraji reveals
that "general opinion outside Army circles would have been in favour of withdrawing Subhas Chandra Bose from the Southern regions …. Because they realized that he would be more harshly treated than anyone else he fell into allied hands."
Text
Document
10 Watanabe Kinji of Hikari
Kikan tells Intelligence Bureau Deputy Director Phillip Finney that he was privy to a secret discussion between
Subhas Bose, Lt General Saburo Isoda, Colonel Habibur Rahman and others some time before Bose's reported death. Watanabe
says the agenda of the meeting was to "how to get Mr Bose to his destination." "It was generally understood that he was to get to the Russians, probably to Manchuria."
Text
11. Miscellaneous documents The
"ashes of Bose" Featured here
are four documents, the first of which is a secret 1951 telegram from the Indian Embassy in Tokyo, informing the Ministry of External Affairs that M Ramamurti
(of Indian Independence League) received the ashes of Bose from the Japanese and took them to Renkoji Temple.
The second document is a 21 September 1951 telegram from the Embassy giving information about memorial service for Bose in Renkoji
Temple. The telegram
reads: "Ceremony is reported to have touched off controversy among local Indians over the authenticity of Netaji's ashes and some have denounced the ceremony which is reported to have been attended by only three Indians."
The third document is the copy of a 1952 letter by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to West Bengal Chief Minister
Dr BC Roy. Nehru informs that S A Ayer, who was Bose's Information Minister in Azad Hind Government, was sent to inquire into his death and returned with
a confirmation. The Prime Minister writes that he agrees and wonders what
might be done with the urn containing the ashes. "I should like you to get in touch with Subhas Bose's family and find out from them what they would wish done in this
matter," he tells Dr Roy.
The fourth document is a note giving details about Ayer's report and Prime Minister's letter to Chief Minister. It
says: " According to Dr (BC) Roy's reply (to Nehru) of March 11th, the Bose family were disinclined to move in the matter."
Jawaharlal Nehru - Suresh Bose correspondence Seen
here is the correspondence between Prime Minister Nehru and Suresh Bose, Subhas Bose's elder brother. Suresh
was part of Shah Nawaz Committee (1956) and had dissented from it giving a report damning the Government and concluding that Subhas had escaped to Russia.
The correspondence takes place in 1962 after
Pandit Nehru appears to have asserted in Parliament that Bose died in Taiwan. Suresh Bose asks Nehru for a direct proof and the Prime Minister responds that there is none. This sets off some acrimonious letters from Suresh Bose, who asks Nehru to comment on an intelligence report to the effect that he (Pandit Nehru) had received a letter from Subhas in USSR. The Prime Minister denies it categorically.
Jawaharlal Nehru
- Amiya Bose correspondence Amiya Nath Bose, son of Subhas's elder brother Sarat Bose, writes to
Panditji in 1964 that "in the national interest there should be a final judicial finding regarding the aircrash in Taihoku
in August 1945. It will be in the fitness of things if the Chief Justice of India will agree to preside over a body of judges and enquire into this." In his reply,
Nehru agrees that a finality must be brought to the matter but writes that "it is not quite clear to me how far it will be proper for me to ask the Chief Justice of India to look into this matter."
Lal Bahadur Shastri
- PC Sen correspondence After Lal Bahadur Shastri takes over as Prime Minister, Amiya writes to
him that "Panditji had agreed to his suggestion for a judicial inquiry". Shastriji writes a Top Secret letter to West Bengal Chief Minister Prafulla Chandra Sen that Amiya's contention is not borne out by the letter Nehru
wrote. Shastri solicits Sen's view on the matter, underlining that " I really don't know what further can be done about this matter".
Sen writes back that "in view of the categorical reply of Panditjee to Shri Suresh Bose in August, 1962, I do not think there is anything further that can be done".
Shoulmari inquiry K Ram, Principal Private Secretary to Prime Minister Nehru, writes to Intelligence Bureau Director BN Mullik in 1963 to shed light on certain development about the Shoulmari sadhu episode. Mullik replies that the claim that the sadhu is Bose is false. He rues that "unfortunately, there are people in India, including some in leading positions in public life, who want to exploit Netaji's name. They have been propagating since the last 14 years that the Netaji would return."
For the record, there have been
allegations that the Shoulmari episode was a red herring devised by the
Intelligence Bureau to kill the controversy. A member of the Bose family went on to
claim that he saw BN Mullik and other intelligence officers of
Prime Minister in Shoulmari ashram.
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