End of controversy? Government says Subhas Chandra Bose died in 1945

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose died in an aircrash in 1945, the government said on Wednesday, putting to an end a controversy that refuses to be buried about the freedom fighter having survived the accident.

The Ministry of Home Affairs said in a reply to an RTI application from a Kolkata resident that the Government had come to this conclusion after considering the reports of various committees that probed the death of Bose, who, many believed, had not perished in the crash.

After considering the reports of the Shah Nawaz Committee, the Justice GD Khosla Commission and the Justice Mukherjee Commission of Enquiry, the government concluded that he had died in the crash, the ministry said in its reply.

It also sought to dispel reports that Bose, who was born in 1897, lived in disguise as 'Gumnami Baba' -- which was the belief of a large section of Bose's legion of admirers. "The Mukherjee Commission had come to the conclusion that Gumnami Baba/Bhagwanji was not Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose," it said, adding that information regarding Gumnami Baba and Bhagwanji was available in the Mukherjee Commission report on pages 114-122, and on the website, mha.nic.in.

It also said so far 37 files related to Bose had been declassified.

The Home ministry's spokesman further clarified that the reply to the RTI query was "based on the facts that were already in the public domain and the stand taken by Central governments over the years."