"Let us now examine the contention that the Inquiry Commission appointed under the Chairmanship of Shah Nawaz Khan in April, 1956 was a stage-managed event, calculated to suppress the truth and mislead the public into believing that Bose had died in consequence of receiving fatal injuries caused by the crash of an aircraft in which he was travelling.

Shri Amar Prasad Chakravarti was more forthright, and at the hearing at Calcutta, on November 2, 1970, he posed the rhetorical question: " Is it not a made to orders report to support the statement of Nehru which he made in 1952?" He went on to say: "Had not the report been placed before Parliament, I would not have cared; people would not have cared for this trash, this planned report". He called upon the Government to declare the report null and void. Suresh Chandra Bose Netaji's elder brother, who was a member of the 1956 Committee, said in the report by the offer of a governorship. This offer, he said, was conveyed to him at Tokyo where the Committee was recording evidence in the course of its inquiry. Later, when he declined to sign the report, approved and signed by Shri Shah Nawaz Khan and Maitra, Suresh Chandra Bose was subjected to pressure and coercion by Dr. B.C. Roy, Chief Minister of West Bengal.

Hence the report was a contrived and tendentious document and was proof of Nehru's hostility towards Bose and his determination to suppress the truth and mislead the public.

It was made abundantly clear, at the very beginning of this inquiry, that the report of the Shah Nawaz Khan Committee could not be admitted in order to prove the truth of its contents. This being a de novo inquiry, the findings in the previous inquiry were neither binding on this Commission nor relevant as a piece of evidence.

But the circumstances in which the inquiry was ordered are relevant for throwing light on Nehru-Bose relations as argued at considerable length by counsel appearing on behalf of the Bose family and also on behalf of the National Committee

According to Shah Nawaz Khan, the Government was not at all keen to have the inquiry because the report of Bose's death in an air crash had been accepted as true. But since doubts began to be raised in several quarters and there were newspaper reports alleging that Bose was still alive, Shah Nawaz Khan felt that an inquiry was called for. He said in his evidence before me:

"As a humble soldier and a humble follower of Netaji, like all of my colleagues here, I was anxious to know the truth, and several times, I approached our late, revered Prime Minister, Nehru and requested him to have a formal inquiry. I told him, we do not believe what people say. Therefore, a regular inquiry should be held. I kept on repeating this from the day of my release from the Red Fort in 1946. When we got no response, then I went to Calcutta. There, I met the members of the Netaji Smarak Samiti and the President of that Sasmiti was Shri H.K. Mehtab and the Secretary was Shri S.C. Sinha. I met them and I told them that we must have a regular inquiry, the nation must know what has happened to Netaji and that we must know the truth. I told them that although Shri Habibur Rehman was a very nice man, still unless we held a thorough inquiry, we could not believe him.

" Then the citizens of Calcutta held meetings. I want my friends here to know that it was not a Committee set up by the Govesrnment but by the people of Calcutta. Then, we decided that if the Government of India does not send a Committee, the people will send a Committee. I then went to Tarmattar and met Netaji's elder brother and my learned friend's uncle. I asked him, 'if the people of Calcutta or the people of India agree to send a people's committee on their own, would you be a member of that Committee?' And he sasid, 'Yes'. I have all that correspondence with me here for inspection if anybody likes to go through it. I can place it on the Table of the Commission.

"When this decision was taken, I came back to Delhi and met the Prime Minister. I told him that the people of India had decided to send a committee to Tokyo and make enquiries about Netaji's disappearance. I asked him, 'would you kindly ask our diplomatic mission there to held us?'