The most sensational part of the documents related to the Shah Nawaz Khan committee set up by Jawaharlal Nehru concerns the allegations made by Bose’s elder brother Suresh Chandra Bose, who himself was a committee member. In his dissenting report, he claimed that the other two members of the committee were influenced by Nehru and that he himself had been told by Khan, INA veteran and committee chairman, that he could become the governor of West Bengal if only he agreed to sign the final report confirming that Netaji died in the plane crash.
Three documents related to the committee, which submitted its report in August 1956, and are now available in the National Archives for public viewing, are of interest. One is a short list of points supposedly agreed upon by all the three members for preparing the draft report. This was also signed by Suresh Chandra Bose. The committee noted with surprise that Netaji was not provided a separate plane at Saigon and seats for his entourage. His treatment in a small military hospital by a junior medical officer, denial of full military funeral, with his body placed on a gun carriage etc, the manner of cremation etc, the committee noted, were not in sync with his stature.
However, it found no reason to disbelieve the eyewitnesses, including Habibur Rahman, who was in the plane with Bose. Rahman, who settled in Pakistan, had accompanied Netaji’s ashes to Tokyo and later deposed before the committee. The Japanese officers who were no longer in service also had no reason to give a doctored version even as they endorsed what Rahman had claimed, the committee noted.
But Bose’s elder brother submitted a dissenting report and accused the committee of being unfair. In a fascinating affidavit before the Khosla Commission during the ’70s, Shah Nawaz Khan refuted Suresh Bose’s allegation that he was a British agent, had betrayed Netaji, and had assumed the rank of major-general in the INA without any authority.
The document shows that Suresh had alleged that Khan had himself said in 1951 that Netaji would appear next year. On why the committee decided not to visit the crash site in Taiwan, Khan explains that although an offer was made while they were in Tokyo, the committee felt no purpose would be served because all the eyewitnesses were in Tokyo. Also, any wreckage of the plane would have been removed long ago.
Fifty years later, the Mukherjee Commission, however, concluded that there was no air crash on the basis of an email received from Taiwan, which said that it had no record of any air crash at Taihoku between August and September, 1945.
