Will Ukraine declassifying documents help solve the Netaji puzzle?
Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former Union Minister Subramanian Swamy has said media reports about Subhash Chandra Bose being held in Cell No. 45 of the Yakutsk prison in Russia are correct. "I know for a fact that this is true and I have spoken about it. There is also an article in in the July 19, 1997 issue of the Mainstream written by a former Russian general which details episode," Swamy told The News Minute (TNM). "The Prime Minister will have to declassify the files as pressure will mount," he added. The Ukranian parliament recently voted to open up the country's archives of the Sovet era which is likely to place in public domain some eight lakh files of the spying activities of the former Soviet Union. Read here: Ukraine’s Parliament Votes To Open Soviet-Era KGB Archives To Public This has added fuel to the already raging fire in India about the circumstances leading to the death of the charismatic leader of the Indian National Army (INA). The controversy on the ‘Netaji files’ had erupted after the government had declassified two documents which mentioned that the Nehru government had been spying on Bose’s kin for close to twenty years. A report in The New Indian Express mentions that the files pertain to the period between 1917 and 1991, a time where Bose is believed to have been held captive in a Russian camp along with other prisoners of war and political prisoners. The report mentions that Kuslov, an ex-Soviet agent, had confirmed Bose’s presence in Cell No. 45 of the Yakutsk prison. Kuslov had been training Indians in 1934 and was a Soviet agent in the 1930’s and had frequented Bose’s company. The Jawaharlal Nehru government, citing American propaganda, had earlier rubbished the claims of Karl Leonhard, another spy and prisoner in Siberia who had said that Bose was among the prisoners. Reportedly Dr. Satya Narayan Sinha, an aide of Nehru had testified under oath that he had received noted from 1946 from military operations in Berlin which mentioned that Bose was not dead but had been suffering at the hands of the Russians. The Nehru government had maintained that Bose had been killed in an air-crash in Taiwan on August 18, 1945. After Ukraine got independent in 1991, the files were in custody of their security service and the government is now planning on releasing the records online. The records mention that prisoners were employed in camps in Yakutsk to build infrastructure for roads and dams. Reportedly, each camp had between 500-1000 prisoners, many of whom died due to poor working conditions. Descendants of Bose’s family had earlier met Prime Minister Modi in Germany on Monday with regard to de-classification of files in possession with the government. They had said that they were confident after meeting with Modi. “Besides looking into the snooping controversy, he has also assured that he will take positive steps towards declassification of the secret files on Netaji," said Surya Bose's brother and family spokesperson Chandra Kumar Bose. “The prime minister has assured of rectifying the distorted history concerning Netaji”, added Bose.