Declassified files prove Netaji did not live in USSR: website

London, Jan 25: The 100 Indian government files declassified by India confirm that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose did not live in the former Soviet Union in or after 1945, said a UK website set up to chart the last days of the nationalist leader.

The Russian government informed the Indian Embassy in Moscow in 1992 and 1995 there is no record of Bose being in the Soviet Union in or after 1945, the website bosefiles.info said as it reiterated its claim on December 7 denying that Bose escaped to the Soviet Union in 1945.

The website was set up in London to chronicle the truth about how Bose met his end. As a maiden disclosure it rendered the speculation among a section of people that he escaped to the Soviet Union instead of perishing after a plane crash in Taipei on August 18, 1945 redundant.

Notes exchanged between the Prime Minister's Office and other union ministries in the mid-1990s uphold the revelation made by bosefiles.info that there were two replies from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to queries from the Indian Embassy categorically stating its point.

In the first response on January 8, 1992, the Russians said "no information whatsoever is available on the stay of the former President of the Indian National Congress, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, in the Soviet Union in 1945 and thereafter".

In the second response dated October 27, 1995, the Russians reiterated "no information has come to light on the stay of Subhash Chandra Bose on the territory of the former USSR in 1945 and in subsequent years". Ashis Ray, Bose's grandnephew and creator of website bosefiles.info, reacted, "The confirmation from the declassified Indian government files is gratifying.

It proves the website has been on the right track from day one". Ray added, "Nothing in the 100 files released by Modi contradicts the facts collated and posted on bosefiles.info and no file anywhere in the world ever will. We are dealing with truth and nothing but the truth".

Bose died in an air crash in Taipei on August 18, 1945, according to documents that form part of 100 secret files, comprising 16,600 pages which were made public by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Netaji's 119th birth anniversary yesterday.

PTI