Netaji Subhas Bose's disappearance - Dr. Satyanarayana Sinha's testimony Part 3

According to Dr. Sinha's account he met a eye witness who was a Chinese spy working in a Japanese canteen. He had apparently got wind of the entire plan of the Japanese to send Netaji out to Dairen after feigning an accident. It seems for several days every day the Japanese tutored Habibur Rahman and other associates on Netaji on how the plane crash theory would be propagated. Of course he was not an interested party in the affairs of Netaji, so he had no reason to lie. Another person whom he met gave him an account of Netaji's life in Dairen. Apparently this latter person was working with Chinese Nationalists against the Chinese Communists. He was working as a barber. He saw Netaji along with other Japanese soldiers. He had already known Netaji through his work in Calcutta. So he spoke with Netaji in Bengali. In order to provide evidence this men showed Dr. Sinha a photo of Subhas Chandra Bose dressed up as a Confucian monk. Apparently this is how he had helped Netaji to remain incognito in Dairen when hostile Russian forces had invaded and made the Japanese prisoner. The photograph was apparently taken in the summer of 1949. His name was Tao Lin. According to this person Netaji was caught by the Chinese Communists who handed him over to the Russians. 

Now comes the interesting part. Between Aug 1945 and summer of 1949 Netaji was in Dairen as per this information. This seems improbable as Netaji should have heard about Indian independence in 1947 and therefore he did not have any reason to stay back to meet the Russians, unless he was unaware of the whole saga of independence. So this piece of information may be a concoction but its likely that Netaji was caught by the Russians along with other Japanese army men when they attacked Dairen.
Next Dr. Sinha met Goga Mukherjee, son of Abani Mukherjee, the Indian communist leader who escaped to Russia and was assumed to be purged by Stalin in 1937. However as per Goga, Abani was spared his life by Stalin. Abani heard from his confidential sources that a top Indian leader who collaborated with the Japanese and Germans in World War was interned in the infamous Yakutsk prison in Siberia. When Abani Mukherjee inquired about the prisoner with Stalin, he was also packed to Yakutsk. Apparently Netaji was in the cell no. 45 of Yakutsk and Abani Mukherjee was locked up in cell no. 57. Stalin had put Netaji in the Gulag to make use of him in his bargains with India. It is to be noted that Stalin did not have much positive impressions about either Nehru or Gandhi. In fact Stalin refused to meet Vijayalakshmi Pandit when she had gone to Moscow in 1948-49. It is also worth noting that according to the Swami Jyotirupananda Vijaylakshmi Pandit saw Netaji in a Russian prison, extremely emaciated and in pitiable condition. She had earlier denied meeting Netaji after 1941 in an affidavit filed to Khosla commission.

Coming back to Dr. Sinha's story, he next met a Soviet agent who told him that Subhas Chandra was handed over to the Russians by Chinese communists. The Russians who interrogated him were of the opinion that he was a Nazi collaborator and hence they sent him to Gulag. Apparently Indian Communist party sent very damaging reports about Netaji to their Russian counterparts. Also the embassy of India had provided a very unfavourable opinion about Netaji Subhas Bose to the Russian high authorities. Given these circumstances Netaji was shunted out in Yakutsk and had no possibility of return. There ends Dr. Sinha's testimony. It is to be noted that Dr. Sinha approached Nehru but that latter disdainfully rejected his claims. Dr. Sinha was also not allowed to depose before Shah Nawaz committee. However he deposed on oath before Khosla commission who did not pay any heed to him.

A little information about the farce carried out in the name of investigation on Netaji's death by successive Congress Governments. In 1956 there was an increasing demand to do an independent probe on Netaji's death using justice Radhabinod Pal. Justice Pal was well known for his courage and penchant for truth. He was the lone Indian judge in the war criminal proceedings against the convicted Japanese prisoners of war in Tokyo including Hideki Tojo. Radhabinod was the lone dissenting voice. He took the full might of the Americans and the British. Even today Japan admires his courage. When Nehru heard Radhabinod would be given the charge of investigation, he panicked and set up a three member committee under Shah Nawaz Khan, the INA veteran who was serving as a Congress minister. On the face of it this had merit because Shah Nawaz was from INA, so it was expected that he would be interested in the truth. But as it happened, he was not. Shah Nawaz was a changed man after Nehru saved him from the gallows and gave him important position. He was Nehru's man. He had been given vast tracts of land in UP, even encroaching forest land, had a special railway station set up near his farm, had all his relations comfortably settled in Pakistan. Incidentally he was the grandfather of the great Shahrukh Khan. In any case, he was a Congressman now. He acted in a partisan way, refusing to listen to the credible witnesses. Suresh Bose, the elder brother of Netaji who was another member of the committee submitted his dissentient report on the verdict of the committee. But Nehru was the winner, his man saved the day for him by betraying Subhas. The next was a commission set up in 1970 under GD Khosla, a high court judge, except Khosla was another yes man. He wrote a hagiography on Indira Gandhi and had made no attempts to discover the truth. It is no wonder that his conclusion was also same, that Netaji Subhas Bose died in the air craft crash. In 1999 another commission was constituted by the NDA Government under Vajpayi, under Justice Mukherjee who was the most unbiased of investigators. Justice Mukherjee took a lot of pains to travel to places and go through documents and also depositions of witnesses. Despite lack of help from Government he fought on. When UPA came back to power their attitude was distinctly hostile. They denied any cooperation to the commission. Justice Mukherjee for the first time came across evidences that there was no plane crash in Taiwan on those dates on which Netaji was supposed to be killed. He had travelled to Taiwan to unearth the information. He also got the Renkoji temple ashes investigated and found that they could not have belonged to Netaji, based on skull formation and other medical evidences. He also investigated the Gumnami Baba angle. His definite conclusion was Netaji did not die in plane crash and the ashes in Renkoji temple belonged to a Japanese soldier. But he could not be definite about Gumnami Baba, because of an inconclusive DNA test, although the handwriting of Gumnami Baba or Bhagwanjee, the saint from Faizabad who died in 1985 and who had remarkable possessions that could only belong to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, matched exactly with that of Netaji, according to the handwriting expert B Lal, and more recently according to another American handwriting expert. In a private interview Justice Mukherjee was caught on the camera much later, saying that he was personally convinced that Gumnami Baba was Netaji, but he had no clinching evidence as apparently the DNA test failed. But it could well be that Indian Government labs under UPA were compromised and it could also be that the saint's teeth were replaced by somebody else's teeth.


In his book Netaji Living Dangerously Kingshuk Nag tried reconstructing some of the events and his theory was that Netaji was in Yakutsk, but later was shifted to a camp near Lake Baikal where he did not have to suffer from the harshness of the conditions in Yakutsk. Nag also concluded that Gumnami Baba could have been Netaji. Nag has given interesting account of the spiritual power of Gumnami Baba who had an extremely strong presence and to whom many dignitaries of that time visited at night, in a secretive manner.

To be noted that in all these saga the Bose family, the nearest family members played an extremely dubious role. Only recently through the declassification of the Netaji files by the Modi Government that we have come to know that IB, that reported to the British MI5 some 20 years after India got independence, spied on the Bose family. The IB Tsar Bhola Nath Mullik himself snooped on Netaji family for 20 years and reported to the British sleuths. This was not possible without Nehru's tacit approval. Nehru did not even allow the photo of Subhas in the central hall of the parliament. There were written orders issued by certain major Khanduri in the Indian army in 1949 which prohibited any display of Netaji's photo in any Indian army establishment. Bose's family members, except Lalita who had travelled to Faizabad, completely ignored the Gumnami Baba angle. Krishna and Sishir Bose and their son Sugato became MPs for Congress and TMC resp. They became die hard Congressmen. Amiya Nath Bose had initially refused to accept the plane crash theory but later he also gave up. Only Sarat Bose, as long as he was alive, staunchly believed that Subhas was alive. Also Suresh Bose did not believe in the plane crash either, as is evident from the dissentient report. It is also to be noted that when Government of India requested Emilie Shenkle to accept the remnants in Renkoji Temple as that of her husband she flatly refused.

Nehru also brought over to his side many of the Azad Hind top brass, like Bhonsle, Nambiar, Abid Hassan, Ayyar, Anand Mohan Sahai and others by offering them plum posts. So there was virtually nobody to speak for Subhas. Kiani, Habibur Rahman and few others went to Pakistan and occupied top posts there. Nehru played an extremely dirty role in the Netaji saga and hopefully history will never forgive him. Whatever had been his personal grudge, he could have played it straight. It is to be noted that even Patel was anti Subhas. He bore a grudge against Subhas from the day Vithalbhai left a legacy to Subhas. So Patel was also not above suspicion in playing a dirty game for keeping Subhas at bay. Most of the top Congress leaders went along with their High Command. They did their best to keep Netaji out of public memory. His references in history books were next to nothing compared to the non violent movements.

The curtain therefore falls on Netaji mystery. Thanks to the relentless pursuing of the case by a group of young researchers of Mission Netaji led by Anuj Dhar, who wrote several books on the case, including India's biggest cover up, the files have been declassified and some light is now available. But to get the fullest information it is necessary to approach KGB archive. However Indian Governments are in no mood to pursue the truth.
Someday, definitely, the truth will come out. It must, if there is any righteousness in this world.