Nehru government snooped on a sadhu, not Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: Congress

As skeletons continue to tumble out of official cupboards on the final moments of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, embarrassing Congress icons, the party on Monday released its own set of classified documents, saying the Intelligence Bureau (IB) under first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was actually snooping on a sadhu, who was claiming to be Netaji. Put on the back foot by the recently declassified documents that revealed that members of freedom movement icon Bose's family were snooped upon for two decades, Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh hit back, releasing a 1961 IB document, correspondence between its West Bengal wing and the then director of the agency.

The file titled as 'Shalmari Ashram Affairs' is an IB dossier on the sadhu, his disciples and their movements. A communication dated September 1963 says, people who got darshan of sadhuji, believe he was none but Netaji Bose. The sadhuji is a chain smoker and aged about 65/66 years, says the local IB sleuth. He, however, was not allowed to take picture of sadhu, as disciples confiscated his camera at the gate. In another communication, the dossier mentions that Speaker of Assam assembly had come to meet the sadhu, but failed to meet him.

But Singh who attempted to turn tables on the BJP-led government by asking for a probe on the mysterious death of one of its stalwarts Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya in February 1968, did not reply, why the Congress-led UPA government rejected Mukherjee Commission report and its recommendations to probe further last moments of Netaji. The previous two commissions: Shah Nawaz Committee and the Khosla Commission were appointed by the Congress government. For bringing truth to the fore, the BJP-led NDA government appointed Mukherjee Commission in 1999, which gave its report in 2005. The government sat on it for six months, then tabled it in Parliament on May 17, 2006, when it also rejected the report. The commission's findings were that Netaji did not die in the August 1945 Taipei plane crash as reported, the ashes at Tokyo's Renkoji temple are not his, the story of the crash was a trick to help him escape, and the Japanese and Taiwanese governments knew about it and the Indian government suppressed a report by the Taiwanese government which stated this in 1956. It concluded that though Netaji is now dead, it wanted a further probe into his last moments.

Over past many years, including the current government has refused to part with files, pertaining to Netaji, saying it will affect relations with friendly countries. Sources say, it was actually to protect some elements in the British and Soviet governments and some Indian politicians and bureaucrats in office at the time from public anger. Taiwanese authorities have in past confirmed that the aircraft carrying Netaji had taken off in a normal fashion and was bound for an airfield in Manchuria which on that date (18 August 1945) was under the occupation of Soviet forces, where he was taken into custody by Russian forces. Author and journalist M D Nalapat has documented that Bose was taken away to a gag within 17 months of internment in a security prison in Moscow, and passed away 11 years later. They add that the Soviet leaders, who came after Stalin, kept the circumstances of Netaji Subhas Bose's capture and passing secret "out of a desire to ensure good relations with India."

"What is clear is that if Subhas Bose had returned to India, rather than either been killed in an air crash or gone permanently missing, he would have easily been the most popular. Given the fact that Netaji attracted both Muslims and Hindus to his fold in like manner, there is a high probability that a Bose-led Congress could have checkmated the plans of both Whitehall as well as M.A. Jinnah to partition India," writes Nalapat.(ends)