The new Prime Minister, Morarji Desai, no wild-eyed Netaji fanatic, told Parliament that Khosla's 1974 report had not been satisfactory. The Khosla findings had left many important queries unanswered on Subhas Bose's 'death' on August 18, 1945, on the island of Formosa. There the matter rested for another 21 years.

Meanwhile, the governments of America and West Germany opened the secret archives of the Third Reich. The declassification shed fresh light on Subhas Bose's wartime mission to Germany and Italy and what happened to him in axis-controlled Europe.

Startling information came to light. Some Indian skeletons also tumbled out of the cupboards. First Germany's hitherto secret documents and then the declassified British documents showed how the Allied powers, by a secret warfare, had frustrated Bose's efforts to help India's internal freedom struggle.

In the late 1980s, the German documents were available to scholars. By 1995, Britain had also declassified a great many India-related documents. Taken together, these declassified documents added a new dimension to our past knowledge of Subhas Bose's wartime moves. Unfortunately, Indian historians took little or no notice of this new information and what it implied.

In the meantime, the end of the Soviet system brought scholars, a few Indians among them, to Russia to study the Soviet archives which had never been declassified before. A small group of Indian scholars, sponsored by the Asiatic Society, with financial assistance of the Government of India, were said to have gained access to Soviet documents on Subhas Bose. The Indian government scheme of assistance to scholars was suddenly cancelled.