Netaji Subhash Bose 100 secret files:Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday unveiled 100 declassified documents on Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose at the National Archives of India. The documents are still not available in the public domain, but the NAI is expected to release around 25 digitised copies every month.

The timing of the release assumes political significance as West Bengal goes to polls later this year. The Mamata Banerjee government has already made 64 documents public last year and requested the Centre to do the same. These 64 documents, running into more than 12,000 pages, revealed that Subhash Chandra Bose’s family was snooped for nearly a decade by the Nehru government after his disappearance. The documents also show that the British suspected Bose was still alive after his plane crashed in Taipei.

Netaji Subhash Bose 100 secret files Released by PM Modi

The files were declassified and put on digital display at the National Archives of India (NAI) in New Delhi by the prime minister, who pressed a button in the presence of Bose family members and Union ministers Mahesh Sharma and Babul Supriyo.

Later, Modi and his ministerial colleagues went around glancing at the declassified files, spending over half an hour at the National Archives. He also spoke to the members of the Bose family.

The NAI also plans to release digital copies of 25 declassified files on Bose in the public domain every month.

Later in the day, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee demanded that Netaji be given the title of “leader of the nation”, just as was Gandhiji was honoured with the title of “father of the nation”.

Without taking any names, she said, “We all know that Netaji was deprived of due respect by some people. It’s time we fulfil our duties in regard to our great leader.”

In October 2015, the prime minister had met the family members of Netaji and announced that the government would declassify the files relating to the leader whose disappearance 70 years ago remains a mystery.

While two commissions of inquiry had concluded that Netaji had died in a plane crash in Taipei on August 18, 1945, a third probe panel, headed by Justice MK Mukherjee, had contested it and suggested that Bose was alive after that. The controversy had also split members of the Bose family too.

The first lot of 33 files were declassified by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and handed over to the NAI on December 4, 2015.

The PM will release digital copies of 100 files related to Netaji following the government’s decision to declassify files on the freedom fighter.

The files, digitised and given “preliminary conservation treatment” by the National Archives of India, will be released on the birth anniversary of Netaji.

The iconic freedom fighter’s family members have sought making public the documents, hoping questions about his mysterious disappearance seven decades back would be answered.

Anita is convinced that the great freedom fighter died in the plane crash and demanded a DNA test to be done on his remains kept at Renkoji Temple in Japan.

The demand for declassification of secret files with the Centre had gathered momentum, especially after the Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal declassified 64 files in its possession last year.

Banerjee has maintained that she didn’t believe that the freedom fighter died in air crash and demanded that the ‘Russian angle’ in Netaji’s disappearance needs to be probed.