Faizabad treasury opens Gumnami Baba's box

LUCKNOW: The Netaji mystery gets curiouser and curiouser.On Tuesday, old photographs of Netaji Subhas Bose's family were found among the belongings of Faizabad's Gumnami Baba , who many believe was Netaji living incognito. The photographs were in a box belonging to Baba and were retrieved from the Faizabad district treasury in Uttar Pradesh, where they had been stored all these years.Among the photos is a family portrait and one of Netaji's parents, Jankinath Bose and Prabhawati Bose. The identities of the people in the photos were confirmed by Shakti Singh, the owner of Ram Bhawan where Gumnami Baba spent the final years of his life, from 1982 to 1985."The family photograph of the Bose family shows 22 members besides his parents," said Singh, who is also a special invitee to the administrative committee formed by Faizabad district administration for retrieval and cross-verification of Baba's artefacts. Singh said that Lalita Bose, the daughter of Netaji's brother Suresh Chandra Bose, had visited Ram Bhawan in Faizabad on February 4, 1986."She identified the people in the photographs, when these were at Ram Bhawan," Singh said, and added that the description Lalita Bose provided is part of the inventory at the treasury. Singh said those standing in the picture (from left to right) in the top row of the photograph are Sudhir Chandra Bose, Satish Chandra Bose, Sarat Chandra Bose, Suresh Chandra Bose, Sunil Chandra Bose and Subhas Chandra Bose In the middle row, are vJankinath Bose and Prabhawati Bose sitting with their three daughters. In the bottom row are the grandchildren of Jankinath Bose.Apart from photographs,several telegrams also were found that were sent to Gumnami Baba by Azad Hind Fauj veterans Pabitra Mohan Roy (senior officer of INA's intelligence wing) and Sunil Kant Gupta on Durga Puja and January 23, Netaji's birthday."Gumnami Baba had a habit of making indirect references to people. He referred to Sunil Kant Gupta as Sukriti. Some letters mentioning the sender's name as Mukul and Tripti were also found," Singh told TOI.Singh heads the SC Bose Rashtriya Vichar Kendra in Faizabad. He said the letters and documents retrieved from Ram Bhawan and kept in the Faizabad treasury indicate that the Baba was not just another sage or saint."He was definitely an extraordinary human being," said Singh.