Come Friday both India and Bharat would go a step closer to unravel one of the most sensational political mysteries of the century.
With the State Government having announced its decision to declassify the secret files on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose critics, politicians, media and the aam aadmi of Bengal wait eagerly to peep through one of the most closely guarded secrets of our time.
The files numbering 64 are currently at the Police Museum and would be thrown open for public viewing from Friday morning whence the people, particularly the media and the members of the Bose family would be able to have a dekho of their contents that had time and again sparked debates on what the critics call the most mischievously hatched political conspiracies in the contemporary history.
“We have no idea till now as to how to access the files. But we have been told that they would be available for reading at the first floor reading hall of the Police Museum at APC Road near Maniktulla in North Kolkata” said a member of the Bose family still “apprehensive whether the decision to declassify the file gets suspended by a last moment political twist.”
According to a senior police officer a massive bandobast have been made to control an overwhelming crowd which might gather at the venue.
“A digitised version of the files will also be made available for viewers” he said adding the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing had done the digitization work.”
The official refused to comment on whether the files could discover for the nation any new political villain or set of villains instrumental in alleged imprisonment of the freedom fighter in a Siberian jail in former USSR.
Netaji researchers however said the file could unravel mysteries like the time of his death “that is whether he died in a plane crash at Taihoku as was made to believe by the British intelligence or even some Indian politicians --- who would have greatly gained from his disappearance --- or he had really been instrumental in igniting some communist upheavals in some South Asian countries before landing up in Stalin’s grip.”
The files contain British intelligence reports on his disappearance, his suspected subsequent activities, notes of senior officials as also surveillance reports on his kin, sources said.
The files are likely also to reveal the role of Nehru in the whole drama or for that matter the surveillance exercise that had started on Netaji’s kin from 1947-48 till seventies. They might also throw light on whether first Bengal Chief Minister BC Roy was privy to the IB reports that were allegedly prepared on daily basis on Netaji kin, sources said.