Legal Aid Forum file PIL in Supreme court on Netaji report

Kolkata, May 29 (UNI) Protesting against the UPA government's total rejection of the Netaji Commission report, the All India Legal Aid Forum has filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court, seeking proper justice to the historic findings of the report.

The report of Justice Manoj Kumar Mukherjee on the mysterious disappearance of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose had conclusively found that Netaji did not die in the widely believed plane crash at Taihoku Airport in Taiwan on August 18, 1945 and that the ashes at the Renkoji temple near Tokyo was not that of Netaji.

But following the submission of the well researched report in Parliament on May 27 after it was handed over to the Union Home Ministry in November last year, the Union government had summarily rejected it without showing any proper ground and thereby creating a nationwide disenchantment about its role behind solving the six-decade-old mystery.

Keeping this in view on behalf of All India Legal Aid Forum, its general secretary Joydeep Mukherjee filed the PIL before the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court on May 24, seeking justice to the report's findings, which, according to them, opened a new vista in the post-Independence chapter of the Indian history.

Speaking to newsmen here today to announce the AILAF's next step besides appealing to the people to extend their whole hearted support in revealing the truth, Mr Mukherjee and other senior members of the Forum, including well known Netaji researcher Purabi Roy, renowned advocate, who assisted the Mukherjee Commission, Chandreyee Alam and Netaji's niece Chitra Basu said the hearing of the PIL would be taken in the Chief Justice's Court in the first week of June.

''Though we are fully supportive of the Commissioin's finding that Netaji was no more now as he would have been 117 years old at present, we want to know the reason why the government had summarily rejected the Commission report despite the submission of enough circumstantial evidences that there was no plane crash at Taihoku airport on that day (August 18, 1945) ruling out the theory that he was killed in that mishap,'' the AILAF members said in unison.

This also led everybody to believe that the ashes kept in Japan's Renkoji temple as that of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was actually not of his, Mr Mukherjee quoting from the Mukherjee Commission report said and demanded that the Centre must also stop forthwith the monthly expenditure, sent to the temple authorities for its maintenance, therby derecognising its contents in its urn.

Asked who had been made party to the PIL, Mr Mukherjee said apart from Defence Minister and leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha Pranab Mukherjee, several senior members of his party and Parliament Secretariat had been made party before the three-member bench in the Apex court.

Incidentally, a few days ago barring Mrs Krisha Bose and her son, all other members of the Netaji's family, including Forward Bloc MP and Netaji's cousin Subrata Bose, urged the government to accept the Mukherjee Commission report in toto and take further action to unravel the six decade old mistery having great international significance.

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