(This paper by senior Supreme Court advocate Subodh Markandeya was censored during Emergency. This is the first time it is being published)

The present paper is based on the research, which I made in the National Archives of India and it was to form the last chapter of my book entitled Passage to Immorality on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. The original chapter was sent to Professor D C Saxena of the English Department of the Punjab University for editorial purpose.

After duly editing it, Professor Saxena sent it back to me, but it became a victim of unannounced censorship practiced during the Emergency of 1975-77, I received manuscript back from Professor Saxena in a torn and mutilated condition and of 40 typed pages sent to him, only7 or 8 pages were retrieved. I again went to national Archives for 3 or 4 weeks for piecing together the Chapter. The second attempt was not so satisfactory because some of the files, which I had originally seen, were not available on the second occasion.

British Intelligence officer's report
The mystery shrouding Netaji's reported death in the air crash at Taihoku Airport, on August 18, 1945 has remained unsolved even 50 years after the event. On hearing about the Japanese announcement, the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, in desbelief, recorded in his journal: "I wonder if the Japanese announcement about Subhas Chandra Bose's death in an air-crash is true. I suspect it very much. It is just what would be given out if he wanted to go underground."

To find out the truth, Wavell's Government sent out an intelligence team headed by Flover Davis, Mountbatten,s Headquarters at Singapore despatched a team of sleuths led by Col. F.G. Finney.

The Director to Military Intelligence (D.M.I.) stationed at Chunking in China, on October 17, 1945 reported to Mountbatten that though Subhas' entourage was "in the plane that crashed, Bose was not there".

After analysing the material and circumstances the report continued; "Perhaps the story about air crash was cooked up at Taihoku. Possibly after that Bose escaped somewhere," adding that "one cannot rule out the possibility of Bose being still alive."

Was Bose a prisoner in USSR?
The British authorities believed that the news about Subhas' death was only a ruse, which enabled him to escape to the Soviet Union. Wavell was so scared of facing Netaji alive in India that in his letter, dated August 20, 1945 to the Secretary of State for India, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, he wrote "it would be a good thing if he was disposed of, without being sent to India."

Sir Robert Francis Mudie Wavell Home Member, in a detailed note on the subject of "Treatment of Bose", prepared for the consideration of the British Cabinet, conceded that the Indian masses had deep admiration and respect for Subhas Bose's "as a sincere patriot and a leader without peer." Mudie proposed the following broad alternatives for the "treatment" of Netaji, (I) to try him in India, Burma or Malaya on charges of waging war against the King or (ii) to try him by a military court outside India or (iii) to intern him in India or some British possession like Seychelles island, and recommended that the easiest course would be to leave him where he is and not ask for his release".

Discounting the reported death of Netaji, the American Office of Strategic Studies commented on January 24, 1946, that the "location of accident and hospital were never given….a good proportion of Indians and British believe that he is alive and hiding in some place" and characterised the story of his death in an air-crash "as untrue and made up by the Japanese".

The Allied teams sent to South East Asia to trace Subhas had the specific authority to arrest him, alive or dead. According to the British Intelligence Report, produced before Shah Nawaz Committee, Gandhiji's "inner voice" on the basis of which he believed Netaji to be alive and hiding, was really the secret letter that he received from Bose. The report added that the Soviet diplomats in Kabul and Tehran confirmed that Subhas was one of the Congress refugee in Moscow-a fact which was vehemently denied by Pravda and the Moscow Radio.