Sunday, December 20, 2015

12 Important Netaji files missing, Relatives upset

12 Important Netaji files missing

New Delhi: Ahead of the declassification of Netaji files on his birth anniversary, 23 January, relatives of Subhas Chandra Bose are upset that the government is yet to make public files about his escape from British India after his arrest, The Statesman reported on Saturday, 19th December 2015.

They are also questioning the authenticity of reports that he married a German woman and had a daughter from her. The relatives have alleged that around 12 files which may have facts about Netaji’s escape from British India are missing.

They have written to the West Bengal government about this. One mystery surrounding Netaji has not been resolved, according to a relative, of his ever getting married to a German woman and fathering a girl child by the name of Anita Pfaff.

A few relatives claim that Netaji never married and thus there is no question of his having a legal heir who can lay claim to his property. They said this was an attempt to defame Netaji.

A letter written to the home ministry by then West Bengal Governor T N Singh, on 1 September 1979, enquired about the identity of Anita Pfaff who claimed to be his daughter.

“According to a Home Ministry response to an enquiry from West Bengal Governor in 1980, the identity of Anita Bose could not be established. Intelligence Bureau also failed to establish the identity of Anita Pfaff or to authenticate that Bose was married to a German lady,” said Rajyashree Chaudhuri, great grand niece of Subhash Chandra Bose, quoting from the letters exchanged between the Home Ministry and the then West Bengal Governor Singh.

According to Chaudhuri no files are available about his activities between 1940 and 1941 when he stayed in Kolkata and a period when he escaped out of British India after being arrested. “The missing files may be about his escape from British India to the West,” she said.

 Chauhuri alleged that 64 files were sent to the Justice Mukherjee Commission for examination by West Bengal. But out of them 12 files are missing and 13 new files have been added to cover up this irregularity.

“The new files added are not very significant. They are just correspondences of Netaji,” she said, adding that a large number of pages from those files are missing.

 Chaudhuri, who is convenor of Jatiya Jagran Mancha, a forum for promoting nationalist ideas, said political parties are not giving much importance to declassifying files that shed light on some of the significant events surrounding Netaji. Analysts feel a political turf war ahead of the West Bengal elections next year between BJP and TMC is quite likely as a few of Netaji’s relatives are in TMC.

The BJP government will try to declassify all the files related to Netaji before the polls in order to win popular support beginning with declassification of 33 files, which have been submitted by PMO to National Archives of India, on the birth anniversary of Netaji, they said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reportedly assured the family members of Netaji that he will take up the matter of accessing the archives of Russia and United Kingdom which would shed more light on his life.

The RSS is also understood to be in favour of declassification of Netaji files as it will prove beyond doubt that there was involvement of Nehru family in the Netaji cover-up.


RTI activists have been striving to get files related to Netaji declassified. Delhi-based RTI activists Gopal Prasad and Subhash Chandra Agrawal filed RTIs with the PMO to reveal the classified Netaji files. Agrawal had received a response from PMO that these files cannot be disclosed as putting them in public domain would “prejudicially affect relations with foreign countries

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