Ex-cop traces lost Rash Behari Bose records

KOLKATA: As a top cop in the intelligence branch of the state police, he was privy to secret information from the pre-independence days that the British considered “classified”. But the search was not easy. Amiya Samanta, who retired as DG of IB in the 90s, found that most of the entries in the files of the IB office dating back to the pre-independence times are incomplete with key pages missing.His search led him to the British Library in London where the missing pages have been preserved serially. Rummaging through these entries Samanta found answers to several unknown stories about Rashbehari Bose. He collated these and started researching. Samanta’s findings will be published in the form of a book soon.
The interest was first generated when Samanta found incriminating details about “terrorists” like Aurobindo Bose, Kshudiram Bose and a whole lot of revolutionaries in the IB files. A large number of pages were missing in both the cases. “When I found the missing links in the British Library, I realized that we need to publish these details in the form of a book, that was done before I retired. But this search obviously led me on to hitherto unknown details about our other heroes. While a lot has been written about the Netaji mystery simply because of his dramatic exit, not much has been done by way of research as far as Rashberhari Bose is concerned. So I decided to concentrate on it,” Samanta said.
He has found entries where Bose had been identified as a “prime enemy” who had to be “intercepted and killed”, since he had stunned the British by mobilizing prisoners of war into an Indian Independence League and the idea of the Azad Hind Fauj had already germinated in his head. “You will be surprised to know that though Rashbehari Bose thought that he was quite safe in Japan, there were British spies following him closely and intercepting letters and all correspondences either from or to him and meticulously jotting down every information they could lay their hands on. The plan was to arrest Bose as soon as possible by springing a surprise on him in an unguarded moment,” Samanta said.

Interestingly, by this time Bose had already settled in Japan and was directing his entire operation from there. Since he had accepted Japanese citizenship and married there, he was outwardly safe, but the British were still trying their best to negotiate with the Japanese government to give him up. “Some entries in the IB files suggest that there was doubt in some quarters about whether the British would be able to convince Japan into doing this. However, since Japan was gradually being battered in the last part of the Second World War and Britain as one of the main forces of the Allied powers was head and shoulders above others, it thought that Japan could be forced into giving up Rashbehari Bose. There are clear entries in the IB files to this effect and have formed the base of my research,” Samanta said.
At this point in time Rashbehari was perhaps being viewed with greater suspicion than Subhas Bose because he had convinced the latter to join him in Japan and become the President of the Indian Independence League.” Bose became his advisor as the British observed with alarm that the two started the Azad Hind Fauz. The entries at this point show how they were planning to simply capture and execute Bose. With his natural death in 1945, they heaved a sigh of relief and this was reflected in the entries,” Samanta added.