Did Laxmi Sehgal hide facts on Subhas Chandra Bose's disappearance?

Browsing through a declassified ministry of home affairs file concerning the formation of the Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry into Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's disappearance, I have come across some correspondence that has refreshed some unpleasant memories. It is my mortification to recall them with a sense of betrayal for they do not reflect well on someone I grew up admiring.

Following an order from the Calcutta High Court to probe the Netaji disappearance matter afresh, the government began taking follow-up actions in 1998. For a start, a secret meeting was set up with a few eminent persons like Dr Sisir Bose, Netaji's nephew, Colonel GS Dhillon and Captain Laxmi Sehgal, both Indian National Army (INA) veterans, former MP and Netaji truth-seeker Prof Samar Guha, Justice RS Narula and others.

Also read: Was Gumnami Baba just a Netaji impostor?

Most invitees confirmed their participation in the secret meeting, which eventually took place March 25, 1998 under the lead of the then home minister LK Advani.

By now a long-standing communist leader, Lakshmi Sehgal, the famed head of INA's women's wing, expressed her inability to attend the secret meeting in a letter to the ministry. For the record, she reiterated her stand that she believed that Bose had died in an air crash in Taiwan towards the end of the Second World War.

As it happened, the government decided to go by the court order and a commission headed by MK Mukherjee, a former Supreme Court judge, came into being.

As the commission began its work, Sehgal asserted in the Anandabazar Patrika of December 4, 2000 that Bose had died in Taiwan and the Renkoji remains were his.

Also read: Why did British refuse to trust sole witness to Netaji's death?

But when the commission asked her to appear before it and enlighten the country with her inside information, Comrade Sehgal declined to appear saying she was not "keeping good health".

The commission then made it easier for the octogenarian icon by arranging for a hearing near her residence. She couldn't refuse this time. Overall, her health was not that bad for her age. She still treated scores of patients who lined up each day in her clinic in Kanpur. Afterwards, she became fit enough to run for the president's office against the legendary Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.

Also read: Did Pranab Mukherjee falsify Netaji's wife on how Bose died?

On June 4, 2001, at the government circuit house in Kanpur, Comrade Sehgal took oath to "tell the truth, whole truth, nothing but truth, and not to conceal anything". I am quoting this from the record of her deposition before the commission.

The record shows her resolutely defending her assertion during the examination by the commission's secretary PK Sengupta, a former state law secretary, and some deponents. Sehgal said: "We had no information then that he (Bose) would go to Manchuria." She added: "The matter of his disappearance has now become a myth."

However, she became tense when a Bose researcher, still part of the Left Front, began putting questions to her as a deponent. The researcher brandished an old VHS tape containing a recording of an interview she gave him eight years earlier. "Please tell us whether this is the video recording of the interview?" he asked her as he inserted the tape into a video player.

"Yes!" said Comrade Sehgal in a subdued tone as her face flickered on the screen.

The researcher asked her to verify if he had indeed sought her guidance "to unfold the mystery shrouding the disappearance of Netaji" and had suggested that "the reason for Netaji's not returning to India might be that he was under arrest in Russia".

"To that, you replied that there were some comrades of yours, especially Abid Hasan, who was personal secretary of Netaji, who had a feeling for a long time that Netaji had been arrested and he was in prison in Russia. Am I correct?"

With the tape playing before her, Comrade Sehgal had no escape route.

"Yes, this is correct. I said so during the interview."

This was not a slip of tongue. Throughout the recorded interview, Sehgal sounded quite positive that there was more than a good chance of Netaji having been alive after August 1945. She even gave out what she described to the researcher as a "lead". She recalled that at the end of the Second World War, she was examined by American intelligence personnel who told her that "they followed a person whose physical description answered to that of Netaji up to the Russian border".

What was even worse is that in the tape she came across as a believer in India's number one conspiracy theory. She referred to some alleged message of Jawaharlal Nehru to Lord Mountbatten that Netaji "should not be allowed to return to India until the process of partition of the country was completed".

Subscribing to the researcher's conspiracy theory that "there was an international conspiracy to keep Netaji out of India", Comrade Sehgal added that "India was a party to that conspiracy".

It was such a shame that she never made public her exact feelings about what really happened to her leader. I wonder if it had anything to do with the compulsions of being a part of a political party not known for admiring Netaji.