By Anuj Dhar

The case for Subhas Bose's 'death' in an air crash is all but based on one man's testimony. There was only one credible eyewitness to Bose's death - INA Deputy Chief of Staff, Colonel Habibur Rehman Khan. Other Japanese co-passengers on the plane had never seen Netaji before. And doctors and nurses at hospital were informed of Subhas Bose's identity only after he had 'died'.

But it is the contradictory testimonies of Colonel Habib that have been casting the biggest doubts. For instance, he is on record having told the British intelligence sleuths that he had no knowledge how Bose came out from the plane.

He went on to tell how he followed 'Netaji' out of the burning plane. He is also on record that he saw Bose lying on the ground when he came out of the burning plane. But a little later during a detailed interrogation he said that soon after he came out from the plane, he saw Bose standing with smoke emanating from his clothes.

In 1945 after the crash, Rehman said the ill-fated plane hardly attained 300 ft. before it crashed, whereas in 1956 while deposing before the Shah Nawaz Committee, he said that the plane took off, did a round of the airport, turned north and crashed.

Hindustantimes.com has in its possession the copies of some secret documents to underline this argument.

A case in point are the sketches, made available by V P Saini, an eminent scholar on Bose, showing the sitting arrangements inside the plane. Habib was thoroughly interrogated by the Britishers immediately after the crash. And he obliged the Shah Nawaz probe, coming over all the way from Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

The sketches drawn on both occasions over his testimony show glaring discrepancies. The October 1945 sketch shows Lt. General Shidei, Bose and Habib sitting in a row on the right side of the plane.

The 1956 sketch shows Bose and Habib sitting on the left side and Lt. General Shidei siting on the other side. How could a military man of Habib's stature make such a mistake when from August 17 onwards all of them occupied the same places?

That Habib was hiding something was very much evident to the British sleuths. An excerpt from Habib's re-interrogation by the Combined Services Detailed Intelligence Corps (CSDIC) in Red Fort in 1946 reads as follows:

"The results (of Habib's re-interrogation) obtained are far from satisfactory and do not take us much further from the original position. Habib-ur-Rehman has shown little co-operation during the course of ingenious denials under the cloak of forgetfulness and the undue advantage that he appeared to be taking of his stuttering habit, his interrogator put him a direct question, whether he was prepared to allow himself to be taken to Taihoku and point out all the relevant places, he thought for a moment and then replied in negative... Throughout the protracted questioning, resentment was visible from B1269's (Habib's) face and he made no bones about it."