New Delhi: A new book on Subash Chandra Bose’s death has claimed that Bose unquestionably died in an air crash in Tokyo. Armed with various investigations and documents, Bose’s grandnephew Ashis Ray made the claim in his new book ‘Laid To Rest’.
Speaking to News18, he said that Bose’s have remained preserved at Tokyo’s Renkoji Temple, a conclusion he reached to in 1995.
“All together 11 investigations have reached the same conclusion. There is no doubt that Bose died in on 18th August 1945 in Taipei,” Ray said.
His claims have been endorsed by Bose’s only living child Anita Pfaff, who has also written the foreword of the book. He claims that there ought to be no controversy surrounding his death as the Japanese government had confirmed the air tragedy in a report to American general Douglas McArthur. America had occupied Japan after the latter’s surrender in World War II.
“I don’t know about Bose’s extended family but I would imagine that the sensible section of the extended family are with her. At the end of the day, only her decision matters legally and morally,” he told News18.
In Pfaff’s foreword in the book, she wrote, “For most people who continue to doubt Netaji’s [Bose’s] death in Taihoku in August 1945, one possible option for proof would be a DNA test of the remains of Netaji…However, the governments of India and Japan would have to agree to such an attempt [to extract DNA from Bose’s bones]… For me personally, this fact was brought home most strikingly when I had the opportunity to be present during an interview by professor Leonard Gordon of one of the survivors of the plane crash in Tokyo in 1979.”
He also said that tensions between Jawaharlal Nehru and Sarat Chandra Bose (Netaji’s brother) were quite evident after the latter resigned from the interim cabinet in 1946. That combined with Sarat’s premature death in 1950, Ray claimed, are prime reasons why Bose’s death remains unresolved. The loss of a credible public authority from the side of the family had its consequences, the book hints.
Ray, however, is all praises for former PM Narasimha Rao. “He did what he could do best in the circumstances. At least he tried to bring back the remains back to India. No other Indian PM has done so,” Ray said.
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