Post-Stalin Netaji advised Soviets, had facial surgery, met Lal Bhadur in Tashkent!

Counterview Desk

In a curious Facebook post "What happened to Netaji?", former editor of the Times of India, Ahmedabad, Kingshuk Nag, who later took over the Hyderabad edition of TOI as editor, has asserted that not only did Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose didn't die in a plane crash, he went to the Soviet Union, where he served as adviser of the Soviet leaders during the post-Stalin phase.

One who has authored a Netaji book, he makes another astonishing "revelation", setting aside his Gumnami Baba theory: that Netaji, it is believed, had undergone face surgery "to change his appearance", and is "supposed to have met Indian PM Lal Bahadur Shastri when he went to Tashkent in 1966." There is reason to wonder: Was Netaji so meek? One doesn't know...

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Today is purportedly the day that Netaji died in an air crash in Taiwan in 1945. An elaborate theory of his death and the fact that his ashes were stored in Renkoji temple was created. By all accounts this is fiction.
Netaji disappeared into Soviet Union where he was looking for assistance to free India. To begin with he was kept in preventive custody as Stalin conferred with aides what to do with him. When India likely to become free in 1947, Stalin was still pondering on the use of Netaji. It was decided that Netaji would be sent to India. Netaji made two broadcasts on radio announcing that he would come to India at the head of an army. Radio technology in those days was weak so what Netaji announced was only monitored by the IB. But in the radio broadcast Netaji declared that he was aware of the trial of INA men at Red Fort. In the event however Netaji did not come. Why? There are no precise answers. But researcher and TV film maker Iqbal Malhotra believes that possibly Netaji fell foul of Stalin and was despatched to the Gulag in Siberia. This is what leading Netaji researcher Purabi Mukherjee also believes. She had lived for many years in Soviet Union and with her knowledge of Russian and contacts in the Soviet intelligence was able to unravel many hard facts. Hard labor there nearly killed Netaji but Stalin's death in 1953 led to a material improvement in Netaji's condition. He was released from the Gulag and settled in Moscow to continually advise the new rulers of USSR about India. Netaji never came back to India though many believed that this was the case (yours truly included). The Gumnami baba who lived in Faizabad near Ayodhya was an IB plant set up by B N Mallik who was an IB chief for a record twenty years. Lot of folks got taken in by the Gumnami baba tales and a Bengali movie that he was Netaji was also made. This is merely fiction.
Netaji stayed in USSR and is believed to have undergone face surgery to change his appearance. He is supposed to have met Indian PM Lal Bahadur Shastri when he went to Tashkent in 1966. Thereafter we have no clue about Netaji: but he probably died in Soviet Union a few years later. The latter half of the story obviously appears unappetizing to his relatives like his nephew Surya Kumar Bose and niece Madhuri Bose so they assert that Netaji perished in the air crash that never happened.

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