
It's official!

The family of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was under unprecedented surveillance for over twenty years after independence.

Declassified papers of the West Bengal Intelligence Branch have revealed that they were targeted by massive state surveillance machinery that continued the British-era snooping on Bose’s kin.

The family of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (right) was kept under unprecedented surveillance after independence during the premiership of India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday declassified 64 files comprising 12,744 pages from the state police records, keeping a promise she made exactly a week ago.

“The documents prove that the Bose family was spied upon…it’s proven…I will only say it is unfortunate,” Banerjee told the media at the state police museum where the documents were unveiled.

The disclosures, first reported by the India Today Group on April 10, 2015, revealed a 20-year surveillance on the Bose family, between 1948 and 1968.

These were accessed from only two declassified special branch files of around 50 pages.

The papers reveal how dozens of spies of the Intelligence Branch, as the state IB was then called, mounted surveillance on Netaji’s older brother Sarat Chandra and his sons Ameya Nath Bose and Sisir Kumar Bose.

The IB sleuths intercepted letters at a post office near their residences and tailed the family members around the country, drafting secret reports that were sent to IB headquarters in New Delhi.

Revelations

These early revelations from the huge mass of documents have further incensed the Bose family present at the police museum on Friday.

“This kind of surveillance is usually done on anti-national elements and not freedom fighters like Sarat Bose,” Netaji’s grand-nephew Chandra Kumar Bose told Mail Today.

The Bose family has reiterated their demand for a probe by the Centre into the snooping.

A Special Branch letter from the trove of documents declassified on Friday reveals the government order which first authorised interception of the Bose family letters from their residences on 38/2, Elgin Road and 1, Woodburn Park, Calcutta: Government Order No. 1735 dated 20/9/48.

The special branch cites this letter to ask its headquarters for a one-year extension in the interception period because it had been carried on ‘with good results’.

Surveillance

The surveillance continued until 1971 (and not until 1968 as documents revealed earlier this year seemed to indicate). IB headquarters in Delhi was keen to know about the activities of the Bose family.

A secret note dated 1971 addressed by a special branch officer in Kolkata to the Assistant Director in the IB in Delhi encloses a report on the ‘activities of Sisir Kumar Bose, son of late Sarat Bose, resident of 1 Woodburn Park, Calcutta.’

The West Bengal files go back to the paranoia of the British during the Second World War as they obsessed over the activities of freedom fighters of the Bose family.

A July 1942 letter by the special branch mentions how the Hindustan Standard was the only newspaper in Bengal which refused to carry an obituary on the ‘death’ of Subhas Bose in an air crash in Europe in March 1942.

The officer believed this newspaper appeared to be in wireless contact with territory occupied by Japan. JVB Janvrin, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Branch) who had arrested Netaji Bose in 1940, was now in charge of the surveillance on his family members.

The British-era machinery that had been switched on, was not turned off by the Nehru government.

“Those who were accusing us of having indulged in selective leaks today stand discredited,” says Netaji researcher Anuj Dhar, who first spotted the declassified files in the National Archives in Delhi.

“Not only did the CM of West Bengal publicly state that snooping did happen, she made available proof of this extensive surveillance.”dfddfd

Pressure on centre to follow in West Bengal's footsteps

BJP leader Subramanian Swamy has threatened to sue the government if it does not declassify the files by end of 2015

By Mail Today Reporter

After the West Bengal government declassified Netaji files in what was termed by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as a historic move, pressure is now on the Centre to make public documents that can put an end to mystery of Subhas Chandra Bose’s death.

The NDA government in New Delhi has taken the line followed by its predecessor that declassification of Netaji files could have an impact on India’s relations with some friendly countries.

But the pressure is building now and taking the lead is BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who said he would move court against the Central government if Netaji files were not released.

"I have already told the government to declassify the files or else I will move court by the year end. They don’t have an authority to keep the files of Subhas Chandra Bose in secrecy,” said Swamy.

Welcoming the West Bengal government’s move, Swamy said Mamata Banerjee showed courage and the Centre should now follow suit.

“There is no Soviet Union now and in England the Labour Party is no more in power so it won’t hamper the foreign relations but would defame Nehru and the Congress,” he said.

Apart from Swamy there are several others who have been fighting Centre’s resistance to declassify the files.

The Union Home Ministry in 2006 had told the Information Commission about the sensitive nature of these files and had feared that their declassification could create law and order issues in the country.

All the attempts to access the files through Right to Information (RTI) were successfully foiled by the government. Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju said the government was not under any pressure and will take a call on the declassification at an appropriate time.

The Centre is in possession of over 100 Netaji files running into some 60,000 pages which are critical to lift the veil of secrecy over Subhas Chandra Bose, whose disappearance in the 1940s has been India’s biggest mystery.

The PMO has 41 files while the Ministry of External Affairs possesses 27 files while the Intelligence Bureau has 77.