New Delhi: Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, whose death has become one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in India, did not die in 1945 and was alive at least till 1964, according to some documents that were declassified by West Bengal government on Friday.
The evidence that he had lived until 1964 is rather circumstantial and no concrete proof is available.
Among the files that were declassified on Friday is an American intelligence report prepared in the early 1960s. The report suggests that Netaji could have returned to India sometime in February 1964. It was 19 years after the purported plane crash in Taihoku, Taiwan in which Netaji had supposedly died.
If that was true and intelligence reports were correct, Netaji was alive in 1964 and was 67 years old at the time.
Relatives of Netaji, who were handed a CD of digital files of all the declassified documents, also said that there is enough proof to establish that he did not die in a plane crash in 1945.
They demanded that all the secret documents related to Bose kept in Prime Minister's Office must also be declassified to unravel the mystery.
Read Also: West Bengal govt declassifies 64 files on Netaji, did he die in 1945?
West Bengal government, led by Mamata Banerjee, decided to declassify 64 files on Netaji. The digitalized version of the 64 files was handed over to descendants of Netaji and mediapersons by Kolkata Police Commissioner S.K. Purkayastha after a small ceremony at the museum.
The files comprise 12,744 pages and are available to researchers and scholars.
According to reports, out of the 64 police, 9 are crucial as they contain intelligence inputs which may throw some light on the fate of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose – the most important question being whether the founder of Indian National Army died in a plane crash in Taiwan in August 1945.
Some of the files are surveillance reports on close relatives of Netaji. The files revealed that the Intelligence Bureau had kept the relatives of Netaji under close surveillance between 1948 and 1968 when Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister.
