Agencies
New Delhi, May 18: The Centre has rejected a commission’s report that said Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose did not die in a plane crash in August 1945.
The Justice Mukherjee Commission was tabled before the Parliament on Wednesday, seven years after it was set up.
The Government also disagreed with the Commission's report that the ashes in Renkoji Temple in Japan were not that of Netaji.
The report of the Commission was placed before both houses of Parliament by Home Minister Shivraj Patil, along with a Memorandum of Action Taken by the government on the report regarding the alleged disappearance of Netaji.
"The government has examined the report submitted by the Commission on November 8, 2005 in detail and have not agreed with the findings that Netaji did not die in the plane crash and the ashes in the Renkoji Temple were not of Netaji," the government said in its action taken report.
Justice M K Mukherjee, retired judge of the Supreme Court, was appointed as a one-man Commission of Inquiry on May 14, 1999 under the Commission of Inquiry Act of 1952 to probe the facts and circumstances related to the disappearance of Netaji in 1945.
The Commission was specifically asked to go into the issue of whether Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose was actually killed in a plane crash or had he died in any other manner, or even if he were alive, the details of his whereabouts.
The government also tabled a statement listing out reasons for delay in placing the report before the Parliament.
Patil said in the statement that the Commission submitted its report on November 8.
Though it had to be placed before the house within six months of submission, it could not do so due to the time taken in translation, printing, consideration of the report by the government, its approval by the Union Cabinet and the adjournment of Parliament on March 22.
The Commission said in the absence of any clinching evidence to prove that "Bhagwanji-Gumnami Baba was Netaji, the question whether he died in Faizabad (in Uttar Pradesh) on September 16, 1985 as testified by some of the witnesses, need not be answered".