UPA concluded Netaji died in plane crash: Report

The UPA had rubbished the findings of an inquiry commission into the death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose headed by Justice Manoj Mukherjee in 2006, a UK website said today.

Bosefiles.Info released what it describes as a "secret" intra-government letter, which confirms rejection of the Mukherjee Commission's findings that Netaji may not have died in a plane crash in Taipei on August 18, 1945.

The website reports: "On 9 May, 2006 a Cabinet meeting of the Manmohan Singh headed government considered the Union Home Ministry's Action Taken Report on the 'Report of Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry on the alleged disappearance of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose'.

"Having done so, it observed that 'the commission's inquiry was inconclusive in many ways, unable to provide a definitive finding on several issues and at variance with past well accepted inquiry commissions' findings in some critical areas," it said.

A purported summary of the minutes of the Cabinet decision are contained in a letter written on May 11, 2006 by Vijai Sharma, Additional Secretary at the time in the Cabinet Secretariat to the then Home Secretary V K Duggal.

This communication was declassified by the Narendra Modi government in March 2016 and is available for public viewing at the national archives and has been reproduced on the website as well.

"More specifically, the Cabinet held that the 'Government did not agree with the findings' of the commission that '(a) Netaji did not die in the plane crash; and (b) The ashes in the Renkoji Temple (in Tokyo) were not of Netaji'," highlights bosefiles.Info, which was set up last year to present documentary evidence about Netaji's death in a plane crash in August 1945.

"The historic conclusions of the Singh Cabinet amount to a decisive and emphatic rejection of cock and bull theories about what happened to Bose peddled by a section of his extended family and supporters; and a forceful reaffirmation of the view held by a succession of Indian administrations that he perished as a result of a plane crash in Taipei on 18 August 1945 and the mortal remains preserved at Renkoji Temple are indeed his," said Ashis Ray, creator of the website.