NEW DELHI: The West Bengal government on Friday declassified 64 files related to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose . The files were handed to the family members first and also kept on display in a police museum in Kolkata.

However, the files will be allowed for public viewing only by Monday. The documents are believed to be in over 12,000 pages.

"The files related to Netaji have been placed in the archives of Kolkata Police Museum . There are about 64 file that contain 12,744 pages. The entire files have been digitized and the original files have been kept in the police museum," Kolkata Police commissioner Surajit Kar Purkayastha told the media here.

"It was quite a big task because in a short period of time we had to digitize entire files," he added.

CD's of digitized form of 64 files relating to Netaji were distributed among public and to the family members of Netaji.

Meanwhile, Netaji's grandnephew and family spokesman Chandra Kumar Bose , talking to the media in Kolkata after the files were released, said, "Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has done a great thing and now the Centre has no other option but to declassify the files it has."

"The more important files that can unravel the mystery behind his disappearance are with the central government departments and the mystery can be solved only if those files are declassified," Chandra Kumar Bose said.

The secret files on Netaji may contain enough circumstantial evidence that he was alive till at least 1964, sources disclosed to the Times of India earlier.

READ ALSO: Declassified Netaji files from Bengal could be earthshaking

An American intelligence report prepared in the early 1960s suggests that Netaji could have returned to India sometime in February 1964 — 19 years after it was claimed that he died in an air crash in Taihoku, Taiwan. Though Russia is not mentioned, Netaji researchers believe American intelligence units had learned about his imminent return from Russia via China. He would have been 67 years old at the time.

READ ALSO: Was Netaji alive till 1964?

Among the contents of the 64 files is another US intelligence report on Netaji's escape from house arrest on January 16, 1941.

