In 1978, US said ‘no proof of Netaji crash’
NEW DELHI: Did India withhold from public a 1978 American intelligence report that said there was no clear evidence that Netaji Subhash Bose had died in an air crash?
, made public by the National Archives of India on Wednesday, show that the Mukherjee Commission was not given access to these papers.
The revelation is particularly significant because inquiries into Bose’s reported death in Taiwan on August 18, 1945 were first undertaken by the US military in South East Asia, under the command of General Douglas MacArthur. The information was collected in 1978 by the Indian embassy in Washington, DC from the US state department, following a parliamentary query by Samar Guha. In July 1978, S Sundaram, second secretary at the embassy, forwarded relevant documents to ministry of external affairs in New Delhi with the comment that “these papers do not in any way establish the accuracy of the reports of
“. Documents received by the embassy from the state department show that the American assessment itself was made following a request by the British intelligence.
On July 3 1946, the war department (now the Pentagon) informed state department that “a search of our files in the Intelligence Division reveals that there is no direct evidence that Subhas Chandra Bose was killed in an airplane crash at Taihoko [sic], Formosa, despite the public statements of the Japanese to that effect. Nor is there any evidence available to the Intelligence Division which would indicate that the subject is still alive.”
