Netaji Files Declassified; Family Rejoices

PM Modi today made public digital copies of 100 secret files relating to Netaji on his 119th birth anniversary.

Senior BJP leader L K Advani and a few other MPs seen alongside members of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s family during a function to pay tribute to the freedom fighter on his 119th birth anniversary at the Central Hall of Parliament house in New Delhi on Saturday. (Photo: PTI)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today made public digital copies of 100 secret files relating to Subhash Chandra Bose on his 119th birth anniversary, which could throw some light on the controversy over his death.

The files were declassified and put on digital display at the National Archives of India (NAI) by Modi, who pressed a button in the presence of Bose family members and Union Ministers Mahesh Sharma and Babul Supriyo.

Later, Modi and his ministerial colleagues went around glancing at the declassified files, spending over half an hour at the NAI. He also spoke to the members of the Bose family.

The NAI also plans to release digital copies of 25 declassified files on Bose in the public domain every month.

In October last year, Modi had met the family members of Netaji and announced that the government would declassify the files relating to the leader, whose disappearance 70 years ago remains a mystery.

While two commissions of inquiry had concluded that Netaji had died in a plane crash in Taipei on August 18, 1945, a third probe panel, headed by Justice M K Mukherjee, had contested it and suggested that Bose was alive after that. The controversy had also split members of the Bose family.

The first lot of 33 files were declassified by the Prime Minister’s Office and handed over to the NAI on December 4, last year.

Subsequently, the Ministries of Home Affairs and External Affairs too initiated the process of declassification of files relating to Bose in their respective collection, which were then transferred over to the NAI, it added.