The mystery surrounding the death or disappearance of
Subhash Chandra Bose, one of the most celebrated leaders of the Indian freedom
struggle, has been the subject of many emotional and heated debates, myriad
theories, controversy and incredible curiosity for over seven decades.
Discovery Channel brings an investigative film Subhash Chandra Bose: The Mystery to
track what happened to Subhash Chandra Bose or ‘Netaji’? The enduring question spans a complex web of
characters, places and international politics. Did Bose die in a plane crash in
Taipei as officially accepted? Is it true that Bose returned to India and lived
incognito as a wandering monk? Why did the Government of India kept the files
relating to his death secret for 70 years? What’s in the files declassified in
January 2016?
To air on Monday, July 18 at 9 pm, Discovery Channel’s
one-hour exclusive Subhash Chandra Bose: The Mystery follows an enterprising
young NRI, Sidhartha Satbhai who commissioned Neil Millar, a former veteran of
the Royal Signals Regiment of the British Army, to conduct an image analysis on
video and photographic material supplied to himby an internet group, Anonymous. The footage pertains to an individual
referred to as ‘The Tashkent Man’, who was present during the Indo-Pak Tashkent
Declaration of 10 January 1966. Through
modern scientific and facial analysis, the investigation points to the
possibility that the bespectacled man could be Netaji. The report also infers that if Netaji was
present in the Tashkent Declaration in 1966, he could not have died in the
plane crash on August 18, 1945, as officially reported.
Through a series of interviews with experts, Discovery
Channel’s exclusive examines classified information about the mystery. The film meets Dr. Purabi Roy, Author &
Visiting Professor at Moscow State University and Major General Alexandr
Kolesnikov, Retired Major General of the Warsaw Pact,whodraw upon critical
information from Russian archives regarding Netaji's presence in Post-World War
II Russia.
The film reveals the story of Leon Prouchandy, a forgotten
chapter in the history of the Indian National Army. His story told by his grandson Prashant More
raises yet another question in the enduring mystery of Subhash Chandra
Bose. According to author and historian
Prashant More, the day Bose supposedly died in the plane crash in Taipei, he
was at the Prouchandy Mansion in Saigon (present day Vietnam). He believes that
Bose entrusted the INA’s substantial finances to Leon Prouchandy, one of the
key figures in Bose’s operations in South East Asia.
Further in the film, Dr. Prathama Banerjee, Historian and Associate
Professor at The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) sheds
light on the rise of secret societies in pre-Independence India, their
influence, the leftist leanings of Bose as President of the Indian National
Congress and his association with members of the Communist party.
The film also interrogates Netaji’s associates and his
family including his grandnephews Ashish Ray and Abhijit Ray. Abhijit retraces Netaji’s steps and narrates
his meticulous and planned escape in 1941 from his ancestral house at Elgin
Road, Calcutta to Berlin under a new Italian identity and further raising a
Regiment in the German Army, the Wehrmacht.
Putting various perspectives in one frame, Discovery
Channel’s film Subhash Chandra Bose: The Mystery underlines various
controversies and surmises if the Bose mystery is an International conspiracy
of silence or does the Indian government already has the answers? Watch the
quest for truth in Discovery Channel’s Subhash Chandra Bose: The Mystery on
Monday, July 18 at 9 pm.
The film Subhash Chandra Bose: The Mystery is commissioned
by Discovery Channel India and produced by Iqbal Malhotra, AIM Television Pvt.
Ltd.
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