SOME MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS

EIGHT

SOME MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS

1. In this chapter I shall discuss a number of miscellaneous matters without mention of which this report would lack the virtue of completeness. I shall first take up the role played by Prof. Samar Guha in these proceedings.

2. Prof.Samar Guha may be said to be the prime mover and initiator of these proceedings. It was his zeal and persistence which finally prevailed upon the Government of India to institute the present inquirty and appoint this Commission. He took a live interest in the proceedings, and testified before the Commission on three separate occasions. He went to Taiwan and was present there when the Commission paid a visit to that place to inspect the airfield where Bose’s plane is alleged to have crashed and to gather whatever evidence was available there. He has made several statement in Parliament and at press conference about the subject matter of the inquiry. He, therefore, deserves more than a passing mention of the role he has played.

8.3: Prof. Guha is an active member of the Forward Bloc and a dedicated, uncompromising follower of Netaji. I have little doubt that he has been actuated by the highest motives in doubting the truth of the crash story and in trying to unravel the mystery of Bose’s disappearance. I cannot, however, help observing that he has lent too ready an ear to gossip, rumour, conjecture and fantasies woven by interested individuals. He has accepted newspaper reports as reliable evidence of the published facts, though in many cases, these reports were inspired by sensation mongering reporters or were given publicity by individuals who had scant respect for truth.

This attitude, unfortunately, led him into making a political issue of what should have remained a national cause to which every one should have brought an impartial mind, an unswerving determination to seek the truth and a stern resistence to emotion-charged gullibility. Prof. Guha’s zeal led him to convert his pursuit of truth into a predatory hunt in which the objectives were the report of the Shah Nawaz Khan Committee and the story of Bose’s death caused by an air crash. This was regrettable because he who seeks the truth does not set out with the prepossessed notion of disproving a hypothesis or theory. The impartial, unprejudiced mind has no blot on its copy book which must be erased before the new score can be written down. Shri Guha’s passionate anxiety ot disprove Bose’s death made him interpret every piece of evidence, every rumour, every conjecture only in terms of his personal prepossessions rather than objectively and judiciously.

3. A formal appearance on behalf of the All India Forward Bloc was first entered on 2-11-1970 when Shri Amar Prasad Chakraborty represented the All India Forward Bloc before the Commission. He presented a petition which is a long and rambling political harangue containing nothing of any value to the Commission or any material which would advance the inquiry. There are certain conjectures and speculations, and a great deal of adverse critcism of Mr. Nehru and of the Government. There are certain conjectures and speculations, and a great deal of adverse critcism of Mr. Nehru and of the Government. There is no statement of facts, no indication of any evidence that would throw light on the manner of Bose’s disappearance. There is a reference to the opinions expressed by Gandhiji and Nehru but no mention of what these opinions were based on. The sum and substance of his long statemnt is that Bose was a great patriot, brave, resourceful and dynamic, and despite repeated professions and declarations to the contrary, the Government of India has, for a long time, believed in his continued existence in the land of the living.

The Government was, however, determined to suppress the truth and hamper any objective inquiry into what actually occurred.

4. This proved to be a wholly unjustified charge, and there is not be slightest evidence to support it. The motive behind this charge is the political opposition of the Forward Bloc to the party in power, and a number of false and illogical inferences from perfectly innocent acts and official announcements of the Government of India. There is, for instance, the repeated harping on the failure of the Government to file a statement in these proceedings in accordance with Rule 3 of the Central Commissions of Inquiry (Procedure ) Rules, 1960 framed under Section 12 of the Commissions of Inquiry Act, and the failure of the Government of India to place at the Commission’s disposal all files, documents and other evidence relating to Bose’s disappearance. The matter was discussed by me in my Order dated 2-11-1970 by which I disposed of the petition and the oral submissions made by Shri Amar Prasad Chakraborty in support of the petition. I ruled, by that order, that the terms of reference specifying the scope of the inquiry, clearly implied that the Governement has no case to advance or to prove, and this Commission was completely free to determine the truth and submit its report.

I also ruled that no case of concealment of evidence had been made out against the Government, and that I would, in due course, call for such files and documents as appeared to be relevant. This is what, indeed, happened. As and when I received information regarding files and documents which could throw light on the subject matter of my inquiry, I sent the appropriate requisition to the Government. The requisition was invariably complied with and all files and documents asked for were made available, except one file which was said to have been destroyed in the ordinary course of routine according to which old and unwanted files are destroyed to lighten the burden of the record rooms.

Prof.Guha, however, persisted in his complaint that he Government had not assisted the Commission and had placed impediments in its path and deliberately withheld evidence. I have, at several places, in the course of this report stated that the Government unhesitatingly placed all material in its possessiosn at the Commission’s disposal, and whenever necessary obtained material from other countries through its diplomatic channels.

5. Prof. Guha has no personal knowledge of what happened to Bose. His knowledge is derived from what he has heard and read. From the information so collected he has argued a case for disbelieving the crash story. His evidence, therefore, is pure hearsay and thus possessed of no probative value. His statement, can no doubt, be used as a kind of clue or pointer which if followed up, may or may not lead to evidence which would be both relevant and admissible according to the law of evidence. But the inferences drawn by Prof. Samar Guha and the reasoning adopted by him are wholly inadmissible, as they constitute nothing but the personal opinion of Prof. Guha which lies beyond the purview of Section 45 of the Indian Evidence Act.