Where are the INA Papers?

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Shivraj Patil declassified Nehru snooping file

Activists who lobbied for declassification believe the files were let out by mistake.
NAVTAN KUMAR New Delhi | 11th Apr 2015


Shivraj Patil

It was the Congress-led UPA government that declassified the secret documents that showed that the Jawaharlal Nehru government spied on the family members of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose for over two decades. Senior Congress leader Shivraj Patil, who was Union Home Minister in 2007, decided to declassify the secret documents at the time. These caused major embarrassment to the Congress this week. It took five years, that is until 2012, for some parts of the files to reach those who had asked for them. It took until 2014 for the snooping file to become public.

"I have a feeling that the two files mentioning about snooping by the Nehru government came out by mistake," said Anuj Dhar, who is leading the campaign to declassify the Netaji files.

In 2006, Anuj Dhar along with fellow activists Sayantan Dasgupta and Chandrachud moved the Ministry of Home Affairs, demanding that the documents regarding Netaji's mysterious disappearance in 1945 be made public under the RTI Act. However, initially the MHA was reluctant to do so. The Central Information Commission, in 2007, asked the MHA to make the files public. After this the matter was referred to the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, which cleared it, following which the MHA decided to declassify about 10,000 pages of the 70,000-page Netaji files.

The documents include communications to and from the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the chiefs of intelligence, which had been given to the Shah Nawaz Khan Committee of 1956 and Justice G.D. Khosla Commission of 1970. As per the findings of the two commissions, Netaji died in an air crash in August 1945. However, this was trashed by the Justice M.K. Mukherjee Commission in 2005.

Sources said that a part of the 10,000 pages was declassified in 2012 and sent to the National Archives of India (NAI). The two IB files that talk about spying on Netaji's relatives too were declassified in 2012 and sent from the West Bengal's intelligence branch to the Intelligence Bureau in Delhi.

Sources said that although the MHA had sent the declassified files to the NAI in 2012, it was only in November 2014 that the NAI completed the task of arranging the files, after which these were made accessible to research scholars. Apart from the documents relating to the two inquiry commissions, the NAI also has four other files related to the Azad Hind Fauj.

While replying to a query by Nityanand Rai in the Lok Sabha in February this year, Union Minister of State for Home Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary said: "The Ministry of Home Affairs has sent all the files/documents relating to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose to NAI on 1.10.2012 for permanent retention. It has been informed by NAI that they have prepared the list of these files and publicized the records to the scholars visiting the research room, NAI, with effect from 17.11.2014."

 

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Brilliant minds and military professionals were involved with Azad Hind Govt and INA. Where are their War Diaries, Logs, Govt Records, etc? Nehru had thrown these patriots out of the service, sort of bribing some with high position. All methods were adopted to malign and belittle the performance and courage of these men and women. A record casualty figure og 75 % is enough to testify the mettle these men and women were made of. It also proves beyond any doubt that Netaji was indeed a leader surpassed by few in history. "Give me blood", he said, "and I shall give you freedom". And men and women, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Dalits, Bengalis, Punjabis, Southerners, Pathans - all gave their blood by the tons. These papers need to be retrieved from wherever Nehru and British Intel hid them. GOI should also search records in Yangon, Bangkok, Taipei, Tokyo and Singapore.

 

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Declassified files on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose ruin Jawaharlal Nehru’s image

India Correspondent, bdnews24.com

Published: 2015-05-16 02:56:35 BdST

One of the 37 declassified 'Netaji' files indicates some associates of Subhas Chandra Bose looted the considerable treasures of his Indian National Army (INA).



It also suggests that India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru rewarded at least one of them with a government position.



Another secret file earlier declassified had pointed to continuous surveillance on the Bose family for more than twenty years after Indian independence.



But this file about the 'INA Treasure' is perhaps more damaging.



It deals with how some of Bose's associates looted the treasury of the collapsed Provisional Government of Azad Hind (PGAH) after the great leader mysteriously disappeared, supposedly in a plane crash.



"But the startling twist is not about the missing Indian National Army (INA) treasure worth several hundred crores of rupees today.



“It is that the government of the day knew about it but did nothing," says a detailed report in the 'India Today’ magazine.



Classified papers obtained by the magazine reveal that the Nehru government ignored repeated warnings from three mission heads in Tokyo between 1947 and 1953.



RD Sathe, an undersecretary (later foreign secretary) in India’s Ministry of External Affairs, wrote a stark warning to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, also the foreign minister, in 1951.



He said that a bulk of the treasure had been left behind by Bose in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam.



Gold ornaments and precious stones weighing about 80 kilograms and contributed by Indians across south-east Asia fired by Bose's call for freedom made up the treasure.



This treasure, Sathe concluded, had already been disposed of by the suspected conspirators, notably M Ramamurthy of the Indian Independence League in Tokyo and SA Aiyar, a minister in the INA's provisional government.



"All these warnings were ignored. No inquiry was ordered.



“Worse, one of the former INA men these diplomats suspected of embezzlement was rewarded with a government sinecure," says the 'India Today' report.



On Jan 29, 1945, Indian residents of Myanmar capital Yangon held a grand week-long ceremony. It was the 48th birthday of Netaji, the head of the provisional government of the Azad Hind.



Netaji was weighted against gold, "somewhat to his distaste", Hugh Toye notes in his biography of Bose.



Over Rs 2 crore worth of donations were collected that week including more than 80 kg of gold.



Bose had raised the largest war chest by any Indian leader in the 20th century, says Toye.



But as the Japanese army and the INA lost Burma to the British, Bose retreated to Bangkok on Apr 24, 1945, carrying with him the treasury of the provisional government.



On Aug 15, 1945, Japan surrendered to the Allied Forces. The 40,000-strong INA also surrendered to the Allied Forces in Burma, and their officers marched off to the Red Fort in Delhi to face trial for treason.



On Aug 18, Netaji, along with his aide Habibur Rahman, boarded a Japanese bomber in Saigon that was bound for Manchuria, where he would attempt to enter the Soviet Union.



The bomber is said to have crashed killing the great leader – a claim much of India still does not believe.



The documents now available in the declassified files suggest Nehru's government was repeatedly warned by Indian mission heads in Tokyo that the 'INA treasure' worth millions was embezzled by Ramamurthy and Aiyar.



But Aiyar was rewarded with a government job in the publicity department of Bombay government and later sent to Japan to verify whether the ashes in Tokyo's Renkoji temple were indeed those of Subhas Bose, as claimed.



Many joining panel discussions on Indian TV channels on Friday said Nehru knew about the loot of the INA treasure but maintained silence.



He rather rewarded the culprits with government jobs – because they testified to Bose's death in the plane crash.



Anuj Dhar, who has investigated the Bose mystery in great details, claims the ‘INA treasure loot is free India's first big scam', and Nehru was clearly involved in covering it up.



"He met Aiyar and Ramamurthy several times because these traitors were testifying to Netaji's death in the plane crash, which is what Nehru wanted.



“So he looked the other way over the loot, disregarding suggested action by Indian diplomats in Tokyo," Dhar told Times Now television channel.



Congress spokesperson Ami Yagnik, however, blamed the Modi government for trying to reap political dividend by declassifying the 'Netaji' files.



File 23(11)/56-57, now placed in the National Archives, is, however, scrubbed of any references to the angry reports from diplomats including Sathe.



The file only speaks of the 11 kg of gold that survived the air crash, now in the National Museum.



The declassification ball is now clearly in the government's court.



"It is necessary for the people of India to know the truth," Netaji's grandnephew Surya Kumar Bose told India Today.



"Whether it is good or bad for Netaji, we don't know. But the truth must emerge."





http://m.bdnews24.co...ail/home/968791