The Many Questions Regarding the 'Mysterious' Death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose That Has Been Raised Since 1945

It has been more than 70 years since Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s death, but the questions regarding the circumstances of his demise — the time, year, and location of his passing away — are still shrouded in mystery.

We commemorate his death anniversary on 18 August every year because, according to some of the significant biographers, Netaji died in a plane crash in Taihoku (Japanese Taiwan) on that day in 1945.

The initial investigations carried out by the British Army, the government of British India, the government of Japan, and the Allied Forces also reached the same conclusion that Netaji suffered severe burns during the crash and later died in a hospital on the same day.

According to an article published in The Wire, an independent and private investigation was carried out by war journalist Harin Shah, also corroborated the same story.

The Beginning of The Dispute

The seed of mystery and dispute grew after Indian Independence, in 1956 when the Indian government established the Netaji Inquiry Committee consisting of Shahnawaz Khan ( the parliamentary secretary of the time) Netaji’s brother Suresh Chandra Bose, and S.N. Maitra of the Indian Civil Service to investigate the freedom fighter’s death.

The committee’s report concurred with the fact that Netaji died during the crash. However, Netaji’s brother refused to sign the report, indicating that this was a cover-up and blamed several political leaders, including Jawaharlal Nehru, for it.

In 1966, Suresh Bose also claimed that Netaji is all set to make a return. Although it didn’t happen, a string of conspiracy theories and several reports of Netaji sightings begin doing rounds over the years, keeping one question alive in public consciousness: Is Netaji Still Alive?

For years, some rumours claimed that a saint named Gumnami Baba in Uttar Pradesh was Netaji in disguise. At the same time, a book by Retired Major Gen. GD Bakshi propounded that the plane crash was just a distraction that the Japanese used to help Bose escape to Russia.

In 1970, Justice Khosla Commission reinvestigated Netaji’s death and reached the same conclusion as all the other investigations before — that Netaji died in a crash.

The De-classification of Netaji Files

However, the plane crash death narrative is still challenged not only by the public but also lawyers and academicians over the years.

One of the biggest reasons for people not believing the plane crash story came after Mukherjee Commission’s report. In 1999, the Mukherjee Commission was founded to look into the death of Netaji. Justice Manoj Mukherjee led it, and the conclusion of their investigation confirmed what the public had speculated for years that Netaji did not die in a plane crash, and the ashes in the Japanese temple is not his.

There had been several pleas to declassify Netaji’s files over the years, and in 2015, the West Bengal government made public a set of files from the state archives related to Netaji. Following this move, in January 2016, 304 files on Netaji were also declassified by Central Ministry. However, the government claims that a total of over 2000 files related to Bose have been released so far since 1997, and there aren’t any more files in the archives to be declassified.

Post declassification too, there are many questions left unanswered. While the family, in a bid to get closure, has asked for the DNA testing of the ashes kept in the Renko-Ji temple, others have requested that the Indian government ask all Japanese and Russian files related to Bose to be declassified. While the files declassified by the Indian government have so far not challenged the plane crash death narrative, it has also raised questions about the Nehru government’s need to spy on Netaji’s family for decades, especially if they did not believe Bose to be alive.

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