A leading American handwriting expert has concluded that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose lived in India for several decades after Independence, under the identity of a reclusive ascetic, Gumnami Baba , claims a new book.

The expert, Carl Baggett, reached his conclusion after studying letters written by both Bose and Gumnami Baba.

Baggett is an authority on document examination with over 40 years of experience and has completed over 5,000 cases. Certified by the American Bureau of Document Examiners, Baggett has testified as an expert witness in handwriting in all states in the US. He was given the two sets of letters to analyse without being told the identities of the writers. After he said they were written by the same man, it was revealed to him that the person in question was Netaji Bose. Baggett stood by his conclusion and gave a signed statement to that effect.

According to official records, Bose was killed in an air crash in Taiwan in August 1945 and his ashes were later deposited at the Renkoji temple in Tokyo. However, there have been long been theories that he survived the crash, made his way to India and lived as Gumnami Baba in Uttar Pradesh ’s Faizabad for several decades.

The book, 'Conundrum: Subhas Bose’s Life After Death' by Chandrachur Ghose and Anuj Dhar , mentions a set of 130 letters written by Gumnami Baba to Pabitra Mohan Roy between 1962 and 1985. Roy had served in the Indian National Army (INA) and was a confidante of Netaji. According to the book, he kept in touch with Gumnami Baba and often met him over the years.

The book also cites 10,000 pages of documents, including journals written by other INA members, who met Gumnami Baba during that period. These documents were accessed by the authors from the Justice Mukherjee Commission through RTI.

After examining the letters written by Gumnami Baba to Roy, and also to other revolutionaries, and comparing them with letters proven to be Bose’s writings, Baggett has concluded that they were written by the same person. In his testimony, Baggett says, “Based upon thorough analysis of these items and application of accepted forensic examination tools, principles and techniques, it is my professional expert opinion that the same person authored both the writing on the known (proved as letters written by Bose) and on the questioned documents (accessed from Roy and other revolutionaries by the authors).”

The book also seeks to answer the most obvious question: Why did Bose remain in hiding for so many years? After consultations with psychologists who have examined the letters written by Gumnami Baba, the authors say it's possible that Bose suffered from psychological trauma, perhaps because of torture in Russian captivity.

“The reasons for his remaining underground could be because of apparent post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which manifested in occasional false memories and delusions (paranoid and grandiose) in him. These disturbing signs could not be detected by those around and close to Baba because they treated him like a God-like figure,” says Ghose.

The authors believe that the letters - made public for the first time by Roy’s family - provide clinching evidence and plan to take the issue to court to press for a multi-disciplinary investigation into the mystery around Bose’s death. “If we could access and examine so many documents with our limited resources, a court-ordered inquiry could do more. These are just 20% of the documents,” says Dhar.

