Netaji’s daughter Anita Pfaff calls for return of Bose’s ashes from Japan

Key Highlights

• Netaji’s grand-niece and grand daughter of his brother Sarat Bose, Madhuri Bose said the family had been seeking a return of the ashes and a DNA test to establish their belief that these were the mortal returns of the legendary freedom fighter.
• Many eyewitnesses including Col Habibur Rehman of INA had testified that Bose died in an aircraft crash at Taipei in August 1945.
• However, theories that he survived or never flew on that particular aircraft were floated by those who believed that Netaji would somehow return to India or that he was living in the country in disguise or had died in a Russian gulag.
• Madhuri Bose said that three members of the Bose family, including Netaji’s daughter Anita Pfaff, Dwarka Nath Bose, a well-known physicist and son of his elder brother, and Ardhendu Bose, another nephew of Netaji, had in October 2016 and December 2019, requested the government to order a DNA test of the ashes at Renkoji, in a bid to end the controversy.
• However, this has not been done so far.