By Sitanshu Das

Colonel Habibur Rahman Khan, deputy chief of staff of the INA, was the only Indian witness of the air crash of August 18, 1945 in which Subhas Bose reportedly received fatal wounds.

The British secret services in months following Subhas' 'death' did not quite trust the account Rahman gave of what happened at Taipei airport. But Col Rahman's various statements on how the Indian leader met his death deserves a careful study.

The British pro-consuls in India and their political masters in London apparently did not know enough to confirm that Bose had died. They were not sure that they had been spared the challenge Subhas would have posed to their post-war solution of the Indian problem. Imperial Britain's post-war plans certainly included a Pakistan to be carved out of India.

The Wavell viceroyalty in the concluding months of the war in Asia spawned more than one scheme of division of British India.

Bose, who had strongly backed Gandhi's opposition to the Cripp's proposals in 1942, was expected by the British to be a source of trouble in the post-war period.

Imperial Britain was inclined to plan in 1945 a situation which would remove Bose from the Indian political scene.

The US had even less information on Bose's reported death. The Americans naturally expected the British intelligence agencies to have more information on Subhas Bose.

But the British code breakers had had no intercepts which could throw light on Bose's post-war plans, for the plain reason that the Azad Hind Government leader had not circulated any papers on them nor had he taken too many even in his own entourage into confidence.

The British intelligence officers after Bose's reported death was thrown back on Bose's adjutant to enlighten them on what actually had happened. They suspected the Japanese of bad faith, of trying to mislead them into a wrong trail. The British did not have much respect for Japanese ability for spying and secret warfare.