Declassified files reveal ex-PM Morarji Desai declined to accept inquiry commissions report about Netaji's death

Former Prime Minister Morarji Desai had declined to accept the findings of two Commission of Inquiries that concluded Subhas Chandra Bose died in a plane crash in August 1945, according to the 25 declassified files on Netaji released on Friday. He also re-opened the issue of a fresh enquiry about the mysterious disappearance of Netaji and felt it would be more effective to have an investigative inquiry by experts to find out the reality.

Former MP Samar Guha, in a letter dated February 26, 1991, to then MP Madhu Dandavate, said, "...Morarji Desai, in a public statement in Lok Sabha in September 1978, declined to accept the findings of the Shah Nawaz Committee and Khosla Commission of Enquiry into 'disappearance of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose' since August 18, 1945 as 'conclusive'.

"Shri Morarji Desai as the Prime Minister of India, thus, re-opened the issue of a fresh inquiry about Netaji mystery," the letter read.

Guha also said that Morarji had suggested to him that "instead of holding any public enquiry after so many years of alleged aircrash involving Netaji it will be more effective if an investigative inquiry by experts is made to find out what really happened to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose." He also sought that the then Prime Minister Chandrashekhar should set up an Expert Committee for High Level Investigation into the "secret documents" on disappearance of Bose.

While two commissions of inquiry had concluded that Netaji had died in a plane crash in Taipei on August 18, 1945, a third probe panel, headed by Justice M K Mukherjee in 1999, had contested it and suggested that Bose was alive.

Earlier, Culture Minister released the third batch of 25 declassified files related to Netaji. The first lot of 100 files, after their preliminary conservation treatment and digitisation, were put in the public domain on January 23, while the second lot of 50 files were released on March 29.