by Anuj Dhar
Justice Mukherjee also discovered the truth behind the sham statements of the only living eyewitness of Bose’s “death” in Taipei. Right from the time he volunteered before the war crimes liaison section in October 1946, Dr Tenayoshi Yoshimi insisted that since the Indian leader had died of extensive burning and shock, he specified it in the death certificate he issued on 18 August 1945. Yoshimi testified before the Shah Nawaz Committee that this certificate carried the name of “Kata Kana”, Japanese for “Chandra Bose”. But his junior Dr Toyoshi Tsuruta, told a British army investigation in July 1945 that it was he who had issued the certificate. If it was a “minor” discrepancy, in a major one, the Japanese government in 1955 told the Government of India that the certificate was issued under the name of “Ichiro Okura” with a view to keeping Bose’s death a secret.
The Gaimusho’s record paid little attention to Dr Yoshimi’s statement and instead carried details from an interview with Dr Tsurtua, now saying he had definitely issued the certificate for Okura on 18 August 1945. But when he appeared before the Shah Nawaz Committee, Dr Tsurtua said that the certificate was issued by Yoshimi only. Dr Yoshimi told all the three panels—Shah Nawaz, Khosla and Mukherjee—that the certificate signed by him bore the name “Chandra Bose”. Shah Nawaz and GD Khosla accepted this version and the latter hailed Dr Yoshimi as “a most convincing witness of truth" in his report.
To clear the confusion on this vital point, Justice Mukherjee surveyed the other evidence on record. This is the difference between investigating an issue and whitewashing it. It stood out that the Japanese authorities in Formosa followed a set procedure to dispose of the dead. It involved issuance of a doctor’s report following a death. Thereafter the municipal bureau was approached for a cremation permit prepared on the basis of this certificate.
The permit recording details such as the date of birth of the deceased, their address, reason for death, date and time etc. was issued only after verification by the bureau staff. The body was also brought at the bureau for inspection under the rules. After it was done, the body and the permit issued were taken to the crematorium, where post-cremation an entry was made in the cremation register against the relevant serial number of the permit. Since this procedure was followed for “Chandra Bose”, as Dr Yoshimi and other witnesses had testified, there must have been a clear paper trail, starting from the hospital and ending with an entry in the register maintained at the crematorium.
However, the doctor’s report, police verification report, cremation permit and the entry at the crematorium register all turned out to have been issued for solider Ichiro Okura. While the names of both Yoshimi and Tsuruta figured in these records, Yoshimi misled the Mukherjee Commission, saying he never knew any Ichiro Okura and certainly did not issue any certificate for his death.
In 1955 the Japanese government had asserted that Ichiro Okura was a fake name used for Bose. If the Government of India was sincere about finding the truth about Bose’s fate, this was the smoking gun. According to the records, Okura was born on 9 April 1900. He died on 19 August 1945 due to heart-attack. These details were not true for Bose, going by the official version. It was a clear-cut case of subterfuge resorted to by the Japanese. But India never thought it fit to press Japan to explain why it insisted that the records for Okura had corresponded to Bose and by what logic. Poor Yoshimi was caught in the middle of the Okura tangle as it was his name that appeared on the records. Congressman Shah Nawaz Khan saw nothing amiss and biased GD Khosla came out with what he was immensely good at: Weaving tales. “The certificates have no probative value because they do not purport to relate to Bose’s death and cremation,” he admitted and yet did not address the Japanese motive in claiming that the Okura records pertained to Bose.
Khosla theorised that since the truthful Dr Yoshimi was saying so, there must have been a doctor’s certificate in Chandra Bose’s name, and it must have got destroyed with other military records of that time. This inference was misleading because detailed Japanese-era crematorium records were and are still available in Taiwan. Accessed by Harin Shah in 1946, British/Taiwanese officers in 1956, Samar Guha and Sunil Krishna Gupta in 1973, they threw up no reference to either Bose or any other victim of the reported air crash, whose deaths were certainly not required to be kept secret. Also on record was a 1955 Japanese government communication, which GD Khosla saw, stating clearly that in the files of doctors’ reports, death certificates etc. brought to Japan from Taiwan after 1945 there was no trace of any record about him. Also non-existent were the records for Shidei and others who supposedly died with Bose in Taipei.
Khosla’s “truthful witness” Yoshimi was not being straight. Justice Mukherjee concluded that “the absence of any record relating to Netaji’s death and cremation (in respect of which he claimed to have played a pivotal role) clearly demonstrates that he [Yoshimi] was not telling the truth. [29] Reinforcing it was a mysterious move of the doctor 43 years after the alleged air crash. In 1988 Dr Yoshimi issued a certificate for the death of “Chandra Bose” as a result of burn injuries. Asked by Justice Mukherjee under what circumstances he had produced this certificate, the former Japanese army officer and a man of razor-sharp memory—quite evident even in his advanced age—said “he did not have any clear memory about that”.
Dr Yoshimi could not have issued a duplicate certificate without having the original or its copy in his possession. And he never had them; for his statement to the Shah Nawaz Committee was that “he did not know what had happened to the hospital records after his departure from there on January 21, 1946”. In fact no death or document record bearing the name of “Chandra Bose” was ever in existence among the hospital and cremation records kept in Tokyo and Taiwan. The “Chandra Bose” death certificate was as much real as Bose’s death.
Justice Mukherjee was constrained to deduce that “Dr Yoshimi’s failure to give any reason, much less a satisfactory one, for belated preparation of the copy [of the death certificate]...clearly indicate that the above document cannot but be a manufactured one”. [30] And since the manufactured 1988 certificate reached Joychandra Singh, a researcher and activist assisting the Government of India in proving the Taipei death story, it is not too difficult to guess the motive behind the fabiraction.
If Bose had not died in Taiwan, what happened to him? All hints pointed up the Russian escape and a number of deponents before the commission wanted inquiry in Russia. February 2001 onwards, the Mukherjee Commission repeatedly asked the Government to make arrangements for its visit to the Russian Federation. In 2003 the MEA was requested “to kindly approach the Government of Russia for access of the commission to the archives of KGB (FSB) Federal Security Bureau”. In response, the MEA conveyed the Russian government’s stand that there were no “records in the archive relating to...Bose”. Then the commission made available to the ministry the names and addresses of Russian witnesses cited by Dr Purabi Roy. The commission wanted to examine them during its proposed visit to the country. The ministry was going to take forever to trace these witnesses.
There was no sign of the Russia visit materializing even in February 2005. Deadline hanging over his head, Justice Mukherjee decided to write his report on the basis of the inquiry made thus far. His staffers asked the Home Ministry officials to make arrangements for their handing over the report. Mukherjee was not interested in coming to Delhi. In his last meeting with Home Minister Shivraj Patil, the judge had not even been asked to sit and was given a dressing down. “Mr Patil is learnt to have opined that the inquiry had gone on for ‘too long’, and that ‘too much money’ has been spent on it,” [31] the Pioneer rightly reported.
But many people interested in the inquiry wanted the commission to visit Russia. Many lobbied in their own ways. I approached former union ministers Murli Manohar Joshi and George Fernandes. Battling the Alzheimer’s disease, the socialist warhorse was unable to do as much as he could have. It was erudite Dr Joshi who made the Government extend the commission’s tenure to enable
it to visit Russia. “Why didn’t you come to me earlier?” he asked me in our first meeting. He clarified that as the HRD Minister he was not in the loop when the matter was handled by the NDA government. He met former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and discussed the issue. I don’t know what exactly transpired between them, but apparently the former Prime Minister backed whatever Dr Joshi did afterwards. He met Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Home Minister Patil and pressed that national interest warranted the inquiry to continue. On 15 March 2005, Dr Joshi wrote to Dr Singh:
I am confident that you would agree that the people should not feel that the probe became infructous due to non-cooperation of the Government. The country expects that all efforts would and should be made to bring the true facts to light. This is minimum what we should do in honour of this great son of Mother India.
While this happened, I made a desperate bid to draw the Supreme Court’s notice to the case through a writ petition. It was dismissed on 6 May 2005 by the Bench of Chief Justice RC Lahoti and Justices DM Dharmadhikari and GP Mathur. In its short order, the court said:
We are not satisfied that any case for invoking the extraordinary jurisdiction of this Court under Article 32 of the Constitution has been made out. …It is for the Government of India to take a decision either in the matter of extension of the term of the commission or such other decision as it may deem fit to take on the report, as and when it is submitted, consistently with the provisions of the Commission of Inquiry Act. We do not express any opinion thereon.
I was hurt by the judgment. I think I have a right to disagree with the honourable court without being disrespectful. I do not agree with everything that Lord Ram did, and yet I am a faithful. It was my misfortune that my well-documented but hurriedly drafted petition and spirited arguments of my counsel failed to impress upon the court that the delay in the case was caused due to impediments created by the Government. The court should have been compassionate while disposing of my case. Two days after it happened, another Bench of the apex court heard a matter pertaining to a BSF jawan declared dead after he was reported missing in the 1971 war. Here was the approach I was anticipating would be applied to my case: “Look for jawan declared dead in ’71 war, says SC” read a story in the Times of India on 8 May 2005: “The Supreme Court has showed deference to the belief of one woman that her husband is alive, though the authorities decaled him dead in the 1971 war. It has asked the authorities to keep searching for him.”
I may have goofed up with my petition, my counsel may not have argued properly, but I do feel that the honourable court showed little deference while handling such a matter of national importance. How could the apex court take an unemotional approach towards Netaji’s fate when it is known to empathise and show touching concern in matters relating to even those who have been a menace to the society? The Supreme Court recently frowned upon illegal killing of a Naxal, commenting that “our Republic can not behave like this and kill its own children”. [32] This Republic would not have come into existence but for Subhas Chandra Bose. Of course, this was a different matter, but all I am doing is making a point about what I think is the right way to handle a matter of utmost national importance.
Legal setback was a bad episode, but the efforts of Dr MM Joshi, and probably the threat of a tussle in the Supreme Court, made the Government rethink its decision not to grant another extension to the Mukherjee Commission. On May 4, a day before the Supreme Court was to hear my petition, the commission was informed by the Ministry of Home Affairs that it was actively considering giving the panel another extension. “A formal communication will be issued on completion of the required formalities which may be awaited.” [33]
The commission’s much-awaited Russian visit took place from 20 to 30 September 2005. Joining Justice Mukherjee there were some deponents, including Dr Purabi Roy, and the Pioneer senior editor Udayan Namboodiri. According to the commission report, it “visited some archives located in Moscow, Omsk, Irkutsk and St Petersburg as could be arranged by the Indian Embassy in Moscow in collaboration with the Russian government. The commission could not get any opportunity to visit the Central Archives of FSB (KGB) and the President’s Archives of the Russian Federation”. [34]
At Omsk in the Siberian region adjoining Manchuria, the state archive authorities produced two volumes containing the names of persons sent to the various concentration camps in Soviet years. There was no mention of Bose in those enormous volumes, the commission was told. The archive director told Justice Mukherjee that since all visiting foreigners in Stalin’s era were required to register themselves with the authorities, documents about Bose must exist in Russian archives if he had indeed come to the USSR and “used his real name”. But if Bose had come incognito, or been assigned a pseudonym, no record was expected to be found. A classic chicken and egg situation that is: You can’t get the records unless you have the assigned name, and you can’t get the assigned name unless you have the records.
Namboodiri reported that wherever Justice Mukherjee went, "he was told by responsible officials that evidence, if any, of Netaji's sojourn in Stalinist Russia, can only be found in some 'centralised' place. By 'centralized' they mean Lubayanka". That is the HQ of former KGB. The commission's 10-day tour produced "nothing except exasperation", Namboodiri, who had been following the Bose case for years, commented. “It was nyet, nyet and nyet all through. Yet, one fact that cannot be denied anymore is this: The Russians are certainly hiding something.” [35]
The only place where the commission was offered some records was the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History. Its director told Justice Mukherjee that they had one file each on Subhas and Sarat Bose. The one on Subhas contained Tass reports on Bose-related newsitmes published in Indian, British and Chinese newspapers for the period 1942-1956. Namboodiri wondered why “Russia was so interested in Indian media coverage on Netaji’s disappearance till 1956?” [36]
The commission examined some Russian witnesses whose names were suggested by Dr Purabi Roy. The presence of all of them was “arranged with their consent by the Indian Embassy in Moscow”. [37] It was an exercise in futality as all the four Russians responded in short, measured sentences that they had no knowledge about the possibility of Bose being in the USSR after 1945. The hearings took place on 20 and 21 September in the conference room of the embassy. WWII expert Prof Boris Sokolov, 48, would go so far as to say that
if really Mr Bose was transported to USSR in 1945, then it should be kind of a big special operation and the preparation of such kind of operation should cover more than one month. I have no proof really that he was in USSR in 1945 or later. But, there should be documents in the Archives of Special Services only if Mr Bose really was in the Soviet Union in 1945 or later. I never worked in FSB Archives and could not prove or deny that fact. [38]
Dr Purabi Roy later said that the Russians had “turned hostile” under official pressure. I agreed with her stance for the most part, except that at times she went a little overboard with her suspicion-fuelled belief that Bose met his end in the USSR. Examination of Prof EN Komorov of the Institute of Oriental Studies was quite enlightening on this aspect. He told the commission that probably it was Dr Roy and not him who had remarked during their previous conversation that “let’s take it this way, he [Netaji] was here and he died here”.
What I actually told Dr Roy was what would have probably happened to Netaji if he were here in 1945. Prominent political leaders who were given asylum in the USSR were treated well by the Russians, like Sukarno…. Soviet leaders did not like Nehru. Stalin might have taken interest in Subhas. [39]
But indeed something was fishy about the Russian witnesses. Komorov left without signing the record of his examination. The commission also noted that “Mr Yuri Kuznets declined to depose before the commission. Mr Kolesnikov, another witness, could be ultimately traced by the Indian embassy only after the commission reached Moscow. He, however, could not be made available for his examination since h
e was reportedly posted in Turkey”. [40] Alexander Kolesnikov was the same person who had claimed to have seen a record showing Bose’s presence in the USSR in 1946. The commission kept reminding the Government for months and months to trace him. One needn’t have Udayan’s experience as a journalist to question how was “it possible for any citizen of a country, leave alone a diplomat, to be untraceable?” [41]
Despite limitations and official stonewalling, Justice Mukherjee made several path-breaking findings. Unlike GD Khosla’s, his report was a transparency-seeker’s delight. Of the three volumes of the report, two contained status reports issued by him right from the inception, laying bare to all his conduct and approach—also that of the Government. The main report comprised a concise narrative roughly the size of the two chapters of this book. It did not stray from the subject matter germane to the inquiry, something GD Khosla did quite often in his lengthy report. More than half of the Mukherjee Commission report carried copies of the exhibits relied upon by the judge to arrive at his findings. A descriptive list of all the 308 exhibits was appended at the end of the report. The Khosla Commission report had none. Till date no one knows where the bulk of its exhibits are.
There can be no better way to summarise Justice Mukherjee’s findings than to excerpt his legalistic report in points:
* For proper appreciation thereof the entire story of the plane crash, death of Netaji in the hospital and his cremation, being interlinked, has to be considered as a whole and not in parts.