Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose

Key Highlights As per a classified PMO file, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was in Russia till at least 1968 when he had met Nikhil Chattopadhyay.

The file contains an affidavit filed by Narendranath Sindkdar, a writer and journalist who was based in Moscow between 1966 and 1991.

Sindkar’s affidavit quotes Chattopadhyay as saying that Bose feared being prosecuted as a war criminal in India.

KOLKATA: Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was in Russia till at least 1968 when he had met Nikhil Chattopadhyay – son of revolutionary Virendranath Chattopadhyay – at Omsk, according to a classified PMO file released in Delhi on Thursday.

It contains an affidavit filed by Narendranath Sindkdar, a writer and journalist who was based in Moscow between 1966 and 1991, that claims Chattopadhyay and his wife had met Bose in the Siberian town 23 years after he was apparently killed in a plane crash.

Filed before the Mukherjee Commission in 2000, Sindkar’s affidavit quotes Chattopadhyay as saying that Bose was in hiding in Russia for he feared being prosecuted as a war criminal in India.

The affidavit mentions that Sindkar had met Chattopdhyay in Moscow soon after the death of Vir Savarkar in 1966. Chattopadhyay was born in Russia, where his father was executed by the Stalin government in 1937. “During the course of our conversation he accused Nehru of forcing Netaji Subhas Chandra to exile in the Soviet Russia. It was an exile because Netaji feared that he would be declared a war criminal with the connivance of Nehru. On his arrival in the then USSR via Manchuria, Stalin, Molotov Beria and Voroshilov consulted with the Indologists who advised Stalin to consult Krishna Menon in London through the Soviet embassy. Krishna Menon categorically asserted in favour of Nehru and urged Stalin not to divulge the information...,” Sindkar’s affidavit, enclosed in file number WI/411/1/2000 – EE, claimed.

He went on to mention that he was left shocked by Chattopadhyay’s disclosure. Calling himself an ardent admirer of Netaji, Sindkar said Chattopadhyay had promised to reveal more about Netaji through one comrade Chandran. The affidavit, however, does not talk about further interactions on the revolutionary.

