Times of India: Kolkata: Friday, October 09, 2015.
The ministry
of external affairs has ducked for cover to avoid "lethal" queries on
the status of 'war criminal' tag given to Netaji by the Allied Powers in World
War II.
In response
to an RTI application from Bengaluru-based freelance journalist Choodamani
Nagendra, MEA has cited a clause in the RTI Act 2005 to deny information on
Netaji.
In the RTI
application, Nagendra had asked six questions, all of them related to the 'war
criminal' tag on Netaji. She wanted to know what efforts the Indian government
had taken to remove Bose's name as war criminal from United Nations
Organization records; how many records from the UN were with the MEA that
related to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose as a war criminal; whether India's
representative to the UN had taken up the matter of removing Bose's war
criminal status from UNO records; the number of times such petitions were
mooted and when; and the UNO response to them.
The questions
are significant as many in the Bose family as well as followers of Netaji and
researchers believe he had faked his death in the so-called plane crash in 1945
to avoid being captured as a war criminal by Allied Forces. "I am
convinced Netaji didn't die in 1945 but he couldn't come out in the open
because of the 'war criminal' tag," said Surajit Dasgupta, whose RTI
applications on Netaji have also been variously stonewalled.
He cites the
'Transfer of Power' document (Vol-VI) in which a letter of Sr F Mudie, home
member, viceroy's executive council, to Sur E Jenkins dated August 23, 1945,
revealed that five days after the alleged air crash, they were thinking of
taking a decision on the treatment of Bose as a war criminal and the
consequences they may have to confront. The letter suggested the following
options: Bring him back to India and try him either for waging war or under the
enemy agent ordinance; have him tried by a court in Burma or Malaya for waging
war against the King in that country; have him tried by a military court
outside India; intern him in India or in some other place in British possession
like Seychelles island; or leave him where he is and don't ask for his release.
Anuj Dhar,
author of 'India's Biggest Cover-up' that deals with the Netaji mystery says:
"The war criminal issue was flagged for the first time in 1956 by Netaji's
close friend and aide Muthuramalinga Thevar, who said he had met Bose in China
at Sarat Bose's behest and wanted the Nehru government to clarify whether or
not Bose was still a war criminal. Since then, the issue has simmered on."
Nagendra, who
also came upon the document during her research, filed the RTI to learn if 70
years later, Netaji continued to officially be considered a war criminal for
his association with Germans and Japanese during WW-II. "I also found a
reference of one Satyabrata Tafadar who had written to the UN secretary general
in 1997, seeking the removal of Netaji's name from war criminal records. The UN
official, in the reply on May 1, 1997, had said that that the past could not be
undone but assured that henceforth, Bose's name would not be linked with war
criminals. I wanted to know if things had indeed changed or continued to be
so," she said.
The reply
from MEA was disappointing but not unexpected given the extreme reluctance on
the part of the Centre to declassify information on Netaji. Nagendra who has
been researching on Netaji and writes a column on Bose in a vernacular daily in
Karnataka has made another RTI application with the ministry of home affairs in
which she posed questions on the same subject. She wants to know if the MHA had
documents classifying Bose as war criminal; the status accorded to Netaji
Subhas Chandra Bose as per records of MHA; the MHA's stance on UNO classifying
Bose as war criminal; and records pertaining to it that were with MHA.
The MHA has
not sent its reply yet but sent the queries to director (legal) internal
security. Nagendra wonders why a national icon's name would figure in a cell
that should deal with extremists and other types of criminals.
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