According to the files accessed by CNN-IBN, British and American intelligence agencies did not believe that Bose died in a plane crash in 1945.
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In a letter to Netaji’s family in 1949, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry had said that he could still be alive and the Indian intelligence agencies also knew about this. The news was originally transmitted to the British Foreign Office from the British Embassy in Turkey and is reported to have been confirmed since from Anglo-American secret agents in the East.
The issue went viral, after Katju tweeted against Tagore and Bose. It explored several options about how to deal with Subhas Bose – considered a war criminal for his alignment with Axis powers Germany and Japan – including court martial, deportation to a Sicilian island and a suggestion that he wouldn’t be made to surrender or tried “if he stays where he is”. “But we shouldn’t lose sight of Netaji and his life”, he said.
Even as West Bengal government gets ready to make documents on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose public, the controversy over his death in a plane crash in 1945 in Taiwan has been ignited again. An assistant commissioner of Kolkata Police who is in charge of Calcutta Police Museum where the files would be available for researchers, will be in charge of a police contingent which will be on guard.
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Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former home secretary RK Singh on Thursday said that it would have been better if West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee would have consulted the Centre or Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) before taking decision to declassify freedom fighter Subhash Chandra Bose’s files. An American intelligence report prepared in the early 1960s suggests that Netaji could have returned to India sometime in February 1964 – 19 years after it was claimed that he died in an air crash in Taihoku, Taiwan. “He was a fearless son of our soil and he was from Bengal”, she said.
