Wednesday, July 11, 2012

'IB doctored reports on Netaji's death'

A new book on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, whose disappearance still remains a mystery, says the Intelligence Bureau doctored British intelligence reports to support the Nehru government's claim that he died in an air crash in Taipei on August 18, 1945. 

After being sidelined in the Congress, Netaji mysteriously disappeared from India , went to Germany to strike an alliance with Hitler , and later got Japanese assistance to establish the Indian National Army that fought its way almost up to the northeast of India. 

The book, 'India's Biggest Cover-Up' by former journalist Anuj Dhar, claims that in 1955, then IB director B N Mullik sent a dossier to the Shah Nawaz Committee that had been set up by the government to probe Bose's 'death' . The first document in the dossier was a report from Phillip Finney, an assistant director with IB who had been sent to southeast Asia to ascertain facts. The copy of the November 1945 report supplied by the IB appeared to confirm the Japanese announcement of Bose's death, just at a time when the British were preparing to arrest him. 

The Shah Nawaz Committee and later the Khosla Commission used Finney's report to claim that inquiries by British officers had concluded that the Japanese announcement was correct. 

Dhar claims that Finney's report in the IB dossier had been censored to expunge its last three and most crucial paragraphs - that he was actually not sure of Bose's death. He found the full original report in the archives of a declassified defence ministry file. 

Dhar also accuses Mullik of lying on oath when he was summoned by the Khosla Commission as witness in 1970. When repeatedly asked if the IB ever snooped on Shaulmari baba, a hermit who many believed was Netaji , he said the government never asked the IB to track the hermit because it "did not concern national security" . 

There has been no conclusive proof that Baba was indeed Netaji, but Dhar reproduces formerly top secret IB records to show that Mullik personally supplied information on him to Nehru. 

The author also claims to have collected information from the Taiwan government to rule out the 1945 crash.

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