NETAJI - NOT LABELLED WAR CRIMINAL BY BRITISH

May 29 2016 : The Times of India (Delhi)
NETAJI NEVER LABELLED A WAR CRIMINAL BY BRITISH: PMO FILES


PRITHVIJIT MITRA

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was never labelled a war criminal by the British, reveals classified PMO documents on the revolutionary released on Friday .

The final set of 24 classified files included a correspondence between the Permanent Mission of India in New York and the external affairs ministry in 1999. It reveals that the UN's Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects (CROWCASS) had no reference to Netaji, setting to rest speculations that Bose figured on the list, which possibly made him wary of returning to India post-1945.

The letter dated April 6, 1999 is a part of file number 91S11C2 2000-PO1 and clearly mentions that the CROWCASS lists do not contain any reference to Netaji.

The disclosure buries for good the `war criminal' controversy , says Netaji researcher and author Anuj Dhar. “A lot of time and energy have been wasted on the issue. Thankfully , it has now been put to rest. Netaji was never tagged a war criminal and his actions were never influenced by the fact that he could be persecuted due to the label,“ said Dhar. He added that it was an American journalist who had first mentioned the possibility of Netaji being branded a war criminal by the British in 1945. “The CROWCASS is an exhaustive list of war criminals and suspects from around the world that had been prepared at the end of the Second World War. If Netaji's name doesn't figure in it, then obviously the British didn't tag him.“

Netaji's grandnephew Chandra Bose said the disclosure would help to take the probe forward. “However, I refuse to accept this is the final set of files.These could be the last set that the PMO had handed over to the National Archives. We are still at the initial stages of solving the Netaji disappearance mystery.“