New Delhi: While Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's snooping case has stoked controversy in India, it is learnt that the family members of Netaji will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Germany while the latter is on a three-nation tour.
Netaji's grandnephew Surya Bose, 65, who is a prominent German businessman and among notable members of the Indian community will meet the PM in Berlin.
As reported by India Today daily, the reception will be organized by the Indian Embassy in Hotel Adlon of Berlin on Monday evening.
Bose is the president of the Indo-German Association in Hamburg, the oldest such cultural association in that country. The association was founded on September 11, 1942, in the presence of Subhas Chandra Bose.
The meeting is happening in the backdrop of the news that broke on Friday according to which parts of declassified files of International Bureau (IB) have come to light which showed that IB spied on Netaji's family during 1948 and 1968 at behest of India's first PM Jawaharlal Nehru.
Bose told to the daily, “I would now like to ask Prime Minister Modi to speedily declassify the Netaji files. He has the position and the power to do something about (declassification). So many people are cooking up so many stories around the fate of Netaji. It is time they stopped."
Surya, an information technology professional who has lived in Germany since 1972, said he was snooped upon by India's external intelligence wing, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), when he spoke at lectures in Germany.
Surya is the eldest son of Netaji's nephew Amiya Nath Bose, who was one of the targets of an unprecedented IB surveillance on Netaji's family.
Surya told that whenever he gave lectures, he noticed a RA&W official from the embassy in the audience. He said he gave around dozen lectures in the erstwhile West Germany and always noticed the RA&W agent, who came uninvited.
He also told that the surveillance abruptly stopped in 1978 when the Janata Party came into power.
Surya had extensively spoken about Netaji's involvement with Nazis in West Germany between 1973 and 1978. He said, “I told German audiences that there was not one utterance by Netaji supporting the Third Reich.”
Surya told that governments before the Janata Party were very anti-Bose. He told that “they had totally blacked us out”.
He also told that Netaji remained a taboo topic for the Indian government officials in Germany till mid-1980s where they criticized the nationalist leader for his links with Nazis.
Most of the members of the Bose's family have demanded declassification of ‘Netaji files'.
In January this year also, they demanded the release of over 150 classified files still lying with the Ministry of External Affairs, Home Ministry and Prime Minister's Office.
Now, in the wake of current controversy, the family will again reiterate its demand for a Special Investigation Team (SIT) under a Supreme court Judge to investigate the freedom fighter's mysterious disappearance on August 18, 1945.
Chandra Kumar Bose, Netaji's grandnephew based out of Kolkata said, “The SIT should comprise professionals from the home department, Intelligence Bureau, CBI, MEA, historians and researchers.”
Chandra and his wife Anita Menon-Bose met Modi, then the Gujarat Chief Minister, on April 9 last year and presented a letter signed by 24 family members. The family refuses to believe that Netaji died in the air crash, as stated by the Shah Nawaz Committee in 1955 and the Khosla Commission in 1970.
They uphold the report of the Justice Mukherjee Commission in 2006 which said that Netaji did not die in the air crash. The family was disappointed by the Modi government's reply in Parliament last December when Minister of State for Home Haribhai Chaudhary said the "declassification was not desirable from the point of view of relations with other countries".
