Netaji: Dr Swamy demands SIT probe

NEW DELHI: Janata Party President Dr Subramanian Swamy has demanded a probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) into the findings by the Justice Mukherjee Commission on the disappearance of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. The Justice Mukherjee Commission in its report submitted to the Union Government on Wednesday has rejected the contention that Netaji died in an air-crash on August 18, 1945 in Taihoku airport at Taiwan.    

Dr Swamy in a statement released to the media on Thursday pointed out that the Government’s knee-jerk rejection of the Commission’s findings was an indication of the Congress-led UPA’s nervousness about the truth tumbling out. ” The debunking by the Commission of the  so-called Netaji’s ashes kept in Renoji temple in Tokyo is perfectly justified,” said Dr Swamy.

Dr Swamy, who was the union minister for Law in the Chandrasekhar cabinet said that the then government had rejected a request by the Japanese government to send the ashes back to India. ” This was because the Cabinet papers contained a record of a deposition by  a stenographer of Prime Minister Nehru stating that in December 1946 long after the  alleged crash of Netaji’s plane, he had taken down a letter dictated by Nehru  addressed to Britain’s Prime Minister Attlee complaining that Joseph Stalin was keeping Netaji in a camp in eastern USSR,” Dr Swamy said in the statement. He pointed out that Nehru’s revelation was in the backdrop of Britain’s declaration that Netaji had been declared a war criminal by the British government. He said that the same stenographer had deposed before the Khosla  Commission but Justice Khosla ignored the evidence.

“Subsequently in 1972, I came to  learn that Nehru’s file on Netaji was destroyed on orders of P.N. Haksar, the secretary  to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. In 1978 I had also produced evidence in the Lok Sabha showing that  Netaji’s treasures recovered from his associates  was in 1951 handed over to Nehru’s  emissary, K.R. Damle ICS. Damle who picked them up from Tokyo, personally handed over  the trunks to Nehru in Teen Murti House. Prime Minister Morarji Desai had ordered an  inquiry on my evidence and indeed found the trunks in the National Archives, New  Delhi but without the jewels,” Dr Swamy said  in the release.

The Janata Party President said that had  Netaji lived he would have been Prime Minister of Free India, not  Nehru. “Hence, it is essential to get to the truth of the disappearance of Netaji, and  the motive behind it,  especially since the US and Taiwanese governments deny having  any official reports of any plane crash on August 18, 1945 in Taihoku airport in  Taipeh, Taiwan, ” said Dr Swamy.

Netaji’s plane from Saigon was manifested to travel to Russian held  Manchuria and not to Tokyo or Taipeh.