Was Netaji forced to alter his face, did he die in obscurity in USSR in 1975? Was he so meek?

 

By Rajiv Shah 

This should sound almost hilarious. Not only did Subhas Chandra Bose not die in a plane crash in Taipei, nor was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba who reportedly passed away on 16 September 1985 in Ayodhya, but we are now told that he actually died in 1975—date unknown—“in oblivion” somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Which city? Moscow? No one seems to know.

My former editor at The Times of India, Ahmedabad—who later became editor of its Hyderabad edition—Kingshuk Nag has been making shifting claims about Netaji’s “mysterious” death ever since he published his 2015 book, Netaji: Living Dangerously.

When the book was released in Ahmedabad in 2016, I reviewed it. In it, Nag did not merely reject the air crash theory; he went further, writing: “The match between Gumnami Baba and Subhas Bose seems to be close and thus the possibility of the holy man being the patriot in disguise cannot be ruled out.”

Subsequently, Nag distanced himself from his own Gumnami Baba hypothesis, saying it had been presented with such passion that everyone—including himself—began to believe it. Later research, he suggested, indicated that Gumnami Baba was not Netaji.

I do not know whether fresh editions of the book were published incorporating these changes, nor did I particularly care to find out. However, I do make it a point to read what he posts on Facebook.

In a 2021 post, Nag made an even more startling claim: that Netaji had disappeared into the Soviet Union while seeking assistance to free India. According to him, Netaji was initially kept in preventive custody while Joseph Stalin conferred with his aides about what to do with him.

Nag wrote that as India moved towards independence in 1947, Stalin considered using Netaji politically. It was allegedly decided that Netaji would be sent back to India, and that he made two radio broadcasts announcing his impending return at the head of an army. Because radio technology was weak, Nag claimed, the broadcasts were monitored only by India’s Intelligence Bureau. In those broadcasts, Netaji supposedly referred to the INA trials at the Red Fort. Yet, despite all this, he did not return—and there are, according to Nag, “no precise answers” as to why.

Nag cited a “researcher and TV filmmaker,” Iqbal Malhotra, who speculated that Netaji may have fallen foul of Stalin and been dispatched to the Gulag in Siberia. According to this theory, hard labour nearly killed him, but Stalin’s death in 1953 led to improved conditions. Netaji was allegedly released, settled in Moscow, and began advising the new Soviet leadership on India.

Nag went further. The Gumnami Baba of Faizabad (now Ayodhya), he suggested, was an Intelligence Bureau plant set up by B.N. Mullik, who served as IB chief for a record two decades. Meanwhile, Netaji supposedly remained in the USSR, underwent facial surgery to change his appearance, and even met Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri during the Tashkent visit in January 1966. After that, Nag admitted, there was no clear trace.

In a fresh Facebook post in February 2026, Nag pushed the face-surgery theory further. He now claims that after Stalin’s death, successors who held Netaji in high regard released him from Siberia. Thereafter, Netaji allegedly lived in Moscow with his wife—whom he had met in Berlin in 1939—received medical treatment, and was “goaded” into undergoing facial surgery. He was supposedly used as a Soviet resource, introduced to Shastri in Tashkent, and continued advising Moscow even during the 1971 war. He then died in 1975—“an illustrious life,” but in “oblivion.”

One cannot help but ask: was Netaji so meek? Or did Indira Gandhi and those around her—many of whom later fell from her grace and wrote candidly about her—also know nothing of this supposed Soviet mystery?

This was a man who met Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Hideki Tojo—the most formidable fascist leaders of the twentieth century—in pursuit of India’s freedom. While his meetings in Europe yielded limited results, Tojo publicly pledged Japanese support for Indian independence in the Japanese Diet. Japan provided Bose the platform to lead the Indian National Army and control the Provisional Government of Azad Hind, proclaimed in October 1943. It even symbolically transferred the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to this government.

Such was Netaji’s stature. 

No doubt, many believe that he did not die in the plane crash and instead went to the Soviet Union, where Stalin—known for his brutal methods—placed him in the Gulag. That is conceivable. However, what we are now being asked to believe is something Netaji himself might never have agreed to.

We are now being asked to believe that he was “goaded” into changing his face in the USSR, quietly met Shastri in 1966, advised Moscow during the 1971 war, and then died anonymously in 1975—without once revealing his identity.

I was in Moscow as a correspondent for Patriot and Link between 1986 and 1993. During that time, I interacted not only with senior diplomats but also members of the small Indian diaspora and leading Russian Indologists. Many Indians who had lived in Moscow since the 1960s, as well as Russian scholars of India, spoke candidly. I find it difficult to believe that if Netaji had indeed lived in Moscow for decades, none of them would have known—or mentioned it to me then, or written about it later.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, research into Stalin’s purges became a major scholarly priority in Russia. Yet no Russian scholar—not even Indologists—appears to have asserted that Netaji, after being freed from the Gulag, lived in Moscow with his wife following forced facial surgery, met Shastri, advised the USSR during the 1971 war, and died in “oblivion” in 1975. In today’s Russia, there would be little incentive to conceal such a revelation, especially about a figure of Netaji’s stature.

Nor does any Indian diplomat posted in Moscow, then or since, appear to have publicly hinted at such a story. Diplomats, as we know, often disclose intriguing facts after retirement.

In today’s political climate, revealing such information might even earn a few brownie points with the present establishment. One could take a cue from Nag, who, in reply to a question on his February 2026 Facebook post, targets Jawaharlal Nehru—the favourite punching bag of the current regime—for allegedly concealing the “fact” that Netaji was in the Soviet Union after being released from the Gulag.

Nag claims that Gumnami Baba was “created by Nehru" on the advice of Mullik, who served as IB chief. The reason, according to Nag, was that Nehru “suspected” Netaji was in the USSR and feared that he might one day return to India and be welcomed by the people—to Nehru’s political detriment.

Surely, such a narrative would make for a "The Kerala Story"  or "The Kashmir Files" -style film, with Nehru cast as the villain.