By Soudhriti BhabaniKolkata, Aug 16 : As Netaji Subhas Chandra Boses death anniversary on August 18 nears, the clamour for his ashes, believed to be kept
By Soudhriti BhabaniKolkata, Aug 16: As Netaji Subhas Chandra Boses death anniversary on August 18 nears, the clamour for his ashes, believed to be kept in a temple in Japan, to be subjected to a DNA test and brought back to India is getting louder. IANS spoke to Rajashree Choudhury, great-grandniece of Bose. She is also the national president of Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha (ABHM). Q: Amid the raging controversy about the end of Netaji, last year his daughter Anita Bose Pfaff had urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ensure DNA tests were done on the ashes kept at Renkoji Temple in Japan. Do you believe it would help establish any credible link with the tragic disappearance of Netaji? Do you support the plane crash theory? A: The plane crash death theory has already been nullified. So, there is no question of ashes and the resurrection of the theory again. Netaji has met several people after that as per declassified files including one Shri Nikhil Chattopadhayay, son of revolutionary Virendranath Chattopadhayay, in 1968 at OMSK. According to a classified Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) file released in Delhi, an affidavit filed by Narendranath Sindkdar, a writer-journalist who was based in Moscow between 1966 and 1991, claimed that Chattopadhyay and his wife had met Bose in a Siberian town 23 years after he was apparently killed in a plane crash. Filed before the Mukherjee Commission in 2000, Sindkdar’s affidavit quoted Chattopadhyay as saying that Bose was in hiding in Russia for he feared being prosecuted as a war criminal in India.
