A single-member commission headed by Justice (Retd) Vishnu Sahay to probe into Gumnami Baba / Bhagwanji submitted a 347-page report to Governor Ram Naik in lucknow on Tuesday. later, the Governor said that he would forward the report to the state government after examining it. The commission started working in July, 2016 and completed its findings in the next 14 months. On Nune 26, 2016, the UP government had appointed a one-member judicial commission to probe the mystery of Gumnami Baba who died in Faizabad in 1985. Many believe that Gumnami Baba was none other than Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Rumoured to have died in a plane crash in Formosa (present day (Taiwan) on August 18, 1945, Bose’ death is mired in uncertainty as questions havebeen raised about the veracity of the plane crash.
The Bose family had earlier debunked the Baba as yet another hoax. Over 3,000 articles belonging to Gumnami baba were locked in District Treasury of Faizabad by a court order in 1986. For decades, the legend of Gumnami Baba - an unnamed mystic, was one of India’s most enduring mysteries. The mysterious Baba, who frequently changed houses was rumoured to be a disguised Netaji living out the last years of his life in obscurity. On January 31, 2013, the Allahabad High Court directed the state government to display Gumnami Baba’s possessions in a museum and set up a commission of inquiry to establish is identity. The court had also directed that the committee should also include a team of experts. The verdict came in response to two petitions, filed by Netaji’s niece lalita Bose in 1986 and by BJP leader Shakti Singh in 2010, demanding inquiries into who Gumnami Baba was. There was also an element of competitive politics in ascertaining the identity of the Baba. The unveiling of two decades of snooping by Intelligence Bureau on Netaji kin post-independence, the Modi government at the Centre and Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal initiated declassification of all Netaji files held in archives of the state government. The then Akhilesh government also acted fast. In a move aimed at preventing the BJP from earning political capital out of the court verdict, the UP government decided to display Gumnami Baba’s belongings at Ram Katha Sangrahalaya, a state museum built in Ayodhya.