Kolkata: In a move that will possibly provide some answers on the mysterious disappearance of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in 1945, the West Bengal government, Friday, will declassify 64 files on his life.
The files have been lying with the state’s Home Department. A few days back, The Indian Express had reported that some of these documents suggest that in 1948-49 American and British intelligence agencies believed that Netaji was alive and that he played an important role in Communist uprisings in Southeast Asia.
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“We decided to release the files so that everybody can see them. We don't feel that there is anything related to internal security in the files. Everybody wants to know about what happened to Netaji. He was a brave son of our soil and he was from Bengal," Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had said last week
Asked if the state would request the Centre to declassify files it has in its possession, Banerjee said, "It is for the Centre to decide, but we want the truth about Netaji to come out. It is for you people (journalists) to find out what happened to him."
The Chief Minister also announced that the record of the freedom struggle from 1937 to 1947 would be digitised in order to preserve history.
Asked whether the files to be declassified can throw any clue about the alleged snooping on Netaji's nephew by the Central government from 1948 to 1968, Banerjee said, “You have the options. It is better for you to go through the files to get the answers.”
Recently, some files relating to Bose, declassified by the central government, had revealed that the Ministry of Home Affairs had snooped on at least two of Netaji's nephews.
The files revealed that the Intelligence Bureau had kept the relatives of Netaji under close surveillance between 1948 and 1968 when Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister.
Subsequent to this, family members of Netaji met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and urged him to declassify all Netaji files.
