Mukherjee Commission - Controversies

Controversies

The death of Subhas Chandra Bose remains a mystery. It is claimed that no one cooperated in the investigation and consequently the JMC enquiry was forced to submit its unfinished work to the home minister Shivraj Patil. The main reason for this is the non-cooperation shown by the home ministry. The dissatisfaction caused resulted in Justice Mukherjee sending the report through his secretary rather than submitting it in person.

During the whole tenure of the investigation, only one country, Taiwan has shown any real cooperation. Even the Govt of India refused to share some important intelligence files under the pretext of them being sensitive. The GoI will be tabling this report along with the ATR to the parliament. At the moment the home minister has passed on this 500 page report to the CS division of the ministry for scrutiny.

Subrata Bose, who was present in all the international trips made by the JMC has said that apart from Taiwan, no other country has shown any cooperation. On the basis of the information available from Taiwan it is now confirmed that no air-crash took place on 18 August 1945 which could have killed Netaji as previously propagated.

The commission had tried to uncover facts from trips to Japan, Taiwan and Britain. The UPA govt has permitted the commission to visit Russia. Bose said that Russia too did not cooperate in this investigation. Officials in Russia had said that files were present in the former KGB archives but the commission was not even allowed to visit the archives. The hostile posture of the British, Japanese and Indian governments is intriguing and seems to strongly point to an international conspiracy. In any case it is clear that Netaji Bose was seen in Russia in 1946. Lately American state department has sent information to the commission which corroborate the fact that no aircrash took place in Taiwan. The request for intelligence papers from the Govt. of India elicited the official response that they cannot be opened as they are of a highly sensitive nature that may jeopardise international relations between India and some of its friend nations.

Many files and documents by the Union Home Ministry have been deemed a risk to national security and under Sections 123 and 124 of the Evidence Act and Article 74(2) of the Constitution of India, have not been disclosed to the commission.