India's biggest cover-up

by Anuj Dhar

  * Recording a firm finding on this issue [by merely] treating the oral evidence of the eyewitness about Netaji’s death and cremation as axiomatically true would be non sequitur and over-simplification of and a superficial approach to this complex issue.

  * If...[the contradictory evidence of the eyewitnesses to Bose’s death] is accepted at its face value, still, it must be said, definite findings about Netaji’s death and his cremation can be arrived at if and when the evidence passes the two basic litmus tests of appreciation of evidence, namely, probability and the aphoristic saying, “Men may lie but circumstances do not.”

  * The best corroborative evidence which can unmistakably prove the factum of Netaji’s death and cremation as deposed by the eye witnesses will be the contemporaneous official records relating thereto. Conversely, if there is no such record the commission would not be justified in drawing a definite conclusion on the facts in issue solely relying on the ipse dixit of the eyewitnesses.

  * Proof of a secret plan as also the manner of its execution is largely inferential but the inference to be drawn must be a reasonable one supported by attending facts and circumstances.

  * Netaji could not have thought of taking decision to escape—not to speak of translating that thought into action—without the active support and cooperation of the Japanese military authorities.

  * That Netaji’s decision to go out of Japan was pursuant to a plan formulated on the advice and with the active co-operation and support of the Japanese military authorities stands established by overwhelming evidence adduced before the [Shah Nawaz] committee and the two commissions. [Mukherjee accessed all available records of Khosla & Shah Nawaz panels in view of the fact that most witnesses had died much before his inquiry started.]

  * A secret plan was contrived to ensure Netaji’s safe passage to which Japanese military authority and Habibur Rahman were parties. ...The purpose of his (Netaji’s) flight was to go to the Soviet Union….

  * The death of Ichiro Okura [a Japanese soldier] owing to heart failure on August 19, 1945 and his cremation on August 22, 1945 on the basis of a permit issued on the previous day were passed off as those of Netaji.

  * The very fact that the Japanese army authorities wanted to pass off the death and cremation of Ichiro Okura as those of Netaji is an eloquent proof of their ensuring Netaji’s safe passage by creating a smokescreen.

  * Obviously, in cooking up the story of Netaji’s death in the plane crash and giving it a modicum of truth they (the Japanese military authorities and Habibur Rahman) had no other alternative than resorting to suppression of facts and in doing so they not only invited material contradictions in their evidence...but also left latent loopholes which have now been discovered.

  * Lest the identity of the dead body of Ichiro Okura should have been discovered by the Bureau people who were not likely to be party to the escape plan, the Japanese army officers resorted to various precautionary measures at the time when the dead body of Ichiro Okura was brought to the Bureau for regulatory inspection…. That Habibur Rahman was also a party to the escape plan is evidenced by the prominent role he played in ensuring that the Bureau people could be misled in believing that the body which was going to be cremated was that of Netaji.

  * The very fact that the Japanese Buddhist custom, viz. preservation of the dead body for three days before cremation which fits in the Ichiro Okura’s death on the 19th and his cremation three days thereafter, i.e. on the 22nd, and picking up of bones from every portion of the body after the cremation and keeping the same with the ashes was adhered to is another circumstance which indicates that the body cremated and the mortal remains taken there from were of Ichiro Okura and not Netaji.

  * The eloquent proof of Habibur Rahman’s role in the escape plan and also the manner in which he wanted to execute the same is furnished by the fact that he ensured the photographing of the dead body minus the face.

  * If this evidence of Habibur Rahman [that the plane nosedived from a fairly high altitude] is to be believed, then none of the 12/13 passengers—not to speak of the crew members—could have survived. Viewed in that context the explanation sought to be given by the surviving occupants of the ill-fated plane that as Netaji was sitting by the side of the petrol tank, gasoline flashed all over his body resulting in his sustaining third-degree burns cannot also be believed, for Netaji could not have been in his original position on the floor immediately following the plane’s nosediving.

  * There cannot be any manner of doubt that the version of Habibur Rahman about the nature of injuries sustained by him in the plane crash is suspect.

  * Another significant fact that raises a serious doubt about the truth of Netaji’s death in the plane crash is furnished by the unusual conduct of Habibur Rahman as evinced by his non-commendation of the above news. If Netaji had really died in the manner as alleged it was expected that he (Habibur Rahman) would as the only surviving member of INA immediately report about it, more so when it related to the death of his supreme commander, to his superiors in the army and his colleagues in Bangkok, Singapore, Saigon and Tokyo. His conspicuous silence cannot be explained in any way except that he was playing a very vital role along with the Japanese army authorities in formulation and execution of Netaji’s escape plan.

  The foregoing made Justice Mukherjee arrive at his momentous finding on “the basis of robust circumstantial evidence on record”:

  On a conspectus of all the facts and circumstances relevant to the above issues it stands established that emplaning at Saigon on August 17, 1945 Netaji succeeded in evading the Allied forces and escaping out of their reach and as a camouflage thereof the entire make-belief story of the air crash, Netaji’s death therein and his cremation was engineered by the Japanese army authorities including the two doctors and Habibur Rahman and then aired on August 23, 1945 through a statement prepared by Shri SA Ayer at the direction of the aforesaid authorities to give imprimatur of the INA to the death news of Netaji. …The question whether Netaji thereafter landed in Russia or elsewhere cannot be answered for dearth of evidence. [42]

  In spite of such well-grounded finding, the report got dismissed. Pranab Mukherjee made light of the arbitrary decision in the Lok Sabha on 18 May 2006 saying, “There are umpteen number of cases where the reports of the commissions have been rejected by the Government. Here is nothing new.”

  There was certainly something novel about the Government changing its mind overnight over a nationally important issue. This is what happened in the Bose case. Pranab Mukherjee’s elephantine memory failed him during his deposition before the Mukherjee Commission. He had no recollection of what Prime Minister Desai said in Parliament in August 1978. But Desai’s was the most categorical, highest-level statement ever issued from the Government’s side. It had four distinct parts:

  1. Reasonable doubts have been cast on the correctness of the conclusions reached in the reports of Shah Nawaz Khan and GD Khosla.

  2. Various important contradictions in the testimony of the witnesses to Netaji’s death have been noticed.

  3. Further contemporary official documentary records have also become available.

  4. In the light of those doubts and contradictions and those records, the Government finds it difficult to accept that the earlier conclusions [of GD Khosla and Shah Nawaz] are decisive.

  Compared to Desai, the other prime ministers have either remained mum or made equivocal statements. Prime Minister Nehru after making repeated claims in favour of air crash version—such as that there was overwhelming evidence for it—had to concede in 1962 that there was “no direct and precise proof” to back it. During his official visit to Renkoji temple, Prime Minister Vajpayee described it as a place holding Netaji’s smiritya (memories), avoiding the Hindi word asthiya (mortal remains). There is no known statement of any other Prime Minister—from Lal Bahadur Shastri to Dr Manmohan Singh—so precise as that of Desai’s.

  The importance of Desai’s statement was underscored by the Calcutta Hig
h Court in 1998. The court declared that the “official stand” of the Government is that “there are doubts to the death of Netaji” and therefore there is a “need to have further probe”. The court also pressed that the official stand “as expressed in the Lok Sabha on 28-8-1978 is reiterated on 11-04-1979 by the then Minister of State of Home Affairs Shri Dhanik Lal Mandal”. Supporting the court was the government counsel who “categorically assured” the High Court that the Government of India “is maintaining even now that a further/fresh inquiry/probe is required and the information that Netaji died in the plane crash on August 18, 1945 is full of loopholes, contradictions and therefore inconclusive”.

  The Calcutta High Court’s order led to issuance of a notification by the Government of India on 14 April 1999. Here the Government agreed to launch an “in-depth inquiry into a definitive matter of public importance”. It agreed with the court and set out the terms of references for the commission exactly in the same way the court’s order had outlined.

  a) whether Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is dead or alive;

  b) if he is dead whether he died in the plane crash, as alleged;

  c) whether the ashes in the Japanese temple are ashes of Netaji;

  d) whether he has died in any other manner at any other place and, if so, when and how;

  e) if he is alive, in respect of his whereabouts.

  A plain reading of the terms established that the Government did not know what had happened to Bose and this was for the new commission to find out. Conversely speaking, if the Government had any opinion about any of the above, it would not have referred that point of inquiry to the commission. The option of issuing a white paper was always with the Government, and indeed it was considered by Home Minister LK Advani. Further, the Government had the chance to make its stance clear to the Mukherjee Commission. It never did.

  I know what you are thinking: The BJP was in power then.

  No! Dr Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister for quite some time in early 2005 when Justice Mukherjee heard the arguments of deponents and lawyers. At that time the senior counsel appearing for the Government of India argued that "there were glaring discrepancies in the evidence" [43] and even took credit for the commission's finding evidence in Taiwan that Bose had not died there.

  The Forward Bloc counsel, Keshab Bhattacherjee, pointed out that throughout the inquiry the Government never opposed "the averments made in several affidavits wherein specific statements are made to the effect that there was no plane crash". He submitted that in absence of any government affidavit opposing such claims, it was obvious that such statements were "deemed to have been admitted by the Union of India".

  But after the Mukherjee Commission report was submitted with the conclusion that rather than dying in Taipei, Bose appeared to have escaped toward the USSR, the Government did a 180. In a somersault that can only be inspired by political considerations, Home Minister Shivraj Patil said the Government was reverting to the findings of previous inquiries set up during the Congress rule.

  If there were any lingering doubts about the Government of India’s bona fides on the Bose disappearance issue, they were put to rest when Rudrajyoti Bhattacharjee, Sunil Gupta and others—whose writ petition had led to formation of the Mukherjee Commission—went back to the Calcutta High Court. The affidavit-in-opposition filed on behalf of the PMO and the MHA in October 2007 made it quite clear that the Government was scarcely interested in resolving the issue. The basic thrust in the affidavit was to cover up the matter by distortion and selective presentation of facts. The affidavit would have you believe, without much elaboration of course, that the British and American intelligence teams corroborated Bose’s death. It says there is no evidence/document to prove that Bose had a plan to escape and that he did not die in the plane crash.

  The evidence is there, but jaundiced eyes can’t see it.

  The Government said the witnesses appearing before the first two probes were recalling an event that took place 11 and 25 years earlier. “It would be well-nigh impossible for the witnesses to remember every detail of the accident. It is reiterated that discrepancies do not disprove the air crash story.”

  My submission is: Why did the Government not tell this to the High Court and the commission earlier? No one is nitpicking, but the discrepancies were a wee bit too many to raise eyebrows of any impartial investigor. They were aplenty even before the intelligence teams which had scoured for evidence immediately after the news of crash came in. Habibur Rahman made contradictory statements within a month of the crash.

  How could the so-called eyewitnesses, for example, ever forget for the rest of their lives the dramatic sequence of Subhas Bose coming out of the plane wrapped in fire and one of them risking his life to try and rescue him. Who was the one? Rahamn said he tried to save Netaji; Major Takahashi said no, he did it; Nonogaki said he and Rahman together did their best and Nakamura insisted the credit went to him alone. If four people claiming to have witnessed one major event of history give out four different versions, only a kangaroo court will give their account any credence.

  The contradictions will pile up if one sits down to study the 21 volumes which contain the record of oral evidence tendered before the Khosla Commission. But where do you get them? The Ministry of Home Affairs held them close to its chest as a “Secret” record till the last year when Chandrachur Ghose and I snatched them away at the end of a long-drawn RTI tug of war. The volumes are still not available in any archive. They were given to the Mukherjee Commission after considerable delay so that, I suspect, the commission could not subject them to minute analysis and discover a whole range of anomalies.

  Deponents and lawyers, including the one representing the Government, argued before Justice Mukherjee that “the evidence of the witnesses bristle with material discrepancies and contradictions both inter se and between the statements made before the committee, the earlier commission and other inquiring authorities of foreign governments”. Section 155 of the Indian Evidence Act says “the credit of a witness may be impeached...by proof of former statement inconsistent with any part of his evidence which is liable to be contradicted”. Rudra Jyoti Bhattacharjee referred to a court ruling which said that in case of contradictions in oral evidence, the court should look for documentary evidence. That’s why Justice Mukherjee cross-checked the veracity of oral evidence by searching for supporting documents of Bose’s alleged death in Taiwan. It is shocking that the Government should now find fault with this approach of the former Supreme Court judge, conveniently overlooking that from day one this was also the government approach.

  To put things in right perspective, here’s what Colonel Anderson wrote to the Intelligence Bureauin February 1946:

  For final and positive proof, a British investigation team would need to be sent up to Formosa from Saigon and Hanoi to examine the hospital records at Taihoku. [44]

  In 1951, Dr BV Keskar, the Deputy Minister for External Affairs, recalled in Parliament a 1946 statement of Prime Minister Nehru that Bose had died and the main proof of it was a death certificate issued in Taiwan.

  This conclusion, said Dr Keskar, had been confirmed from reports received from the Japanese government and their agencies and in particular by a statement of a medical officer of the Japanese army who stated that he had made out a death certificate, the cause of death being extensive burns and shock. [45]

  Five years later, the same ministry, which was headed by Nehru, approached the British High Commission over the inquiry of Shah Nawaz. It made a specific request for procuring Bose’s death and cremation records from Taiwan.

  Indian government have asked whether HM Consul in Tamsui could seek certain Formosan witnesses and obtain a copy of cremation certificate. [46]

  If any of papers listed below are available Indians should be grateful for relevant extracts (four copies) with certified English translations both being authenticated by HM Consul:-

  (A) Doctor’s report on Bose’s death at Nanmon Hospital circa 18th A
ugust 1945;

  (B) Police report on death;

  (C) Cremation permit issued by Bureau circa 20th August 1945. [47]

  Justice Mukherjee did exactly what the British investigators wanted to in 1946 and the Government of India did in 1956. And all he got was Ichiro Okura’s death certificate and his name on the cremation permit. Would Anderson have been satisfied that it was “the final and positive proof”?

  Our government should have been grateful to Justice Mukherjee for cracking the mystery. But the PMO and MHA’s joint affidavit of 2007 made outdated, atrocious arguments. The excuse for the non-availability of any record with Bose’s name on it was that “it was a war time and the Japanese surrendered to the Allied forces and as such, either no records were there or whatever records were there might have been destroyed, particularly when the Japanese were in control of Formosa up to 25th October, 1945”.

  The unstated motivation behind the reference to “war time” was GD Khosla’s spin that in the “chaotic conditions” of August 1945 the Japanese lost their bearings and did not carry out even the basic routine jobs. By peddling this line further, the Government of India extrapolated to Japan and its people something which is the hallmark of everyday life in the third world nations, where people go berserk on the arrival of a train at platform.

  Japanese became an advanced people generations ago. The Taipei city of August 1945 was, thank God, not Hiroshima or Nagasaki and the Japanese were never so out of their minds that they wouldn’t do basic paper work about people dying in their military hospitals. So the contention that “no records were there” doesn’t stand to reason. It doesn’t even stand to facts. How would the Government of India classify the documents relating to Ichiro Okura’s death and cremation if not as “records”? When the records for an ordinary solider like Okura could be created in August 1945, what stopped the Japanese from creating those for Bose and Shidei?