Tuesday, 22 January, 2008Govt disclosure of 90 Netaji mystery records has a whiff of cover-up

Home Ministry's "selected" release is first of its kind under RTI Act Records include Intelligence Bureau reports, Ministry of External Affairs' telegrams & prime ministerial correspondence. One note by Prime Minister Nehru will remain classified. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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."