KOLKATA: Netaji researchers have produced the results of a forensic
face-mapping analysis by a British expert which show a strong
resemblance between Subhas Chandra Bose and a man photographed with the
then PM Lal Bahadur Shastri during the Indo-Pak peace talks at Tashkent
in 1966, over two decades after he was supposed to have died in a plane
crash.
Citing the report, the team of researchers has
urged PM Narendra Modi to press Russian President Vladimir Putin for
disclosure of the truth during his visit to Moscow later this month.
If
the photographs are indeed those of Netaji, they nullify two theories
-that he died in an air crash at Taihoku in 1945 and that he was
executed by Joseph Stalin in the early 1950s.
According
to Neil Miller, who has presented expert opinion in cases at the UK high
court and International Court of Justice at The Hague, face-mapping of
the Tashkent mystery man "lends support -leading towards strong support
-to the contention that the person seen in the picture and Subhas
Chandra Bose are one and the same person".
The face-mapping report lends credence to a claim made by Shastri's kin, that the former PM might have spoken to Netaji during his Tashkent visit. Shastri mysteriously died of a heart attack in Tashkent on January 11, 1966. The former PM's grandson, Sanjay Nath Singh, who was nine then, recounted that during a phone conversation barely an hour before he was declared dead, Shastri had said he would disclose something on his return that would make the Opposition forget everything else.
The face-mapping report lends credence to a claim made by Shastri's kin, that the former PM might have spoken to Netaji during his Tashkent visit. Shastri mysteriously died of a heart attack in Tashkent on January 11, 1966. The former PM's grandson, Sanjay Nath Singh, who was nine then, recounted that during a phone conversation barely an hour before he was declared dead, Shastri had said he would disclose something on his return that would make the Opposition forget everything else.
The
forensic face-mapping was commissioned by former Mission Netaji member
and Dutch national of Indian origin Siddhartha Satbhai. The 36-year-old
software professional, who had earlier highlighted the `Paris Man' -an
unidentified bearded man resembling Bose and posing as a journalist in a
group photo taken in Paris on January 25, 1969, during the Vietnam
peace talks between the US and North Vietnam -sourced photographs and
video footage from a variety of sources (British Pathe Online video
archive, Topham Picture Point at Kent, UK, RIA Novosti in Russia, and
Chughtai Museum in Pakistan's Lahore, as well as from the Anonymous
Group -and had them analysed by Miller.
Miller examined
the evidence for a month and then submitted a 62-page report last month,
wherein he noted that there were noticeable similarities in the facial
features of the two men, including ears, eyes, forehead, nose, lips and
chin. The differences, like the hairline, could be attributed to image
quality , capture angles, and items such as glasses and clothing that
mask certain areas.
"Serious consideration must be given
to the conten tion that the Tashkent Man (TM) and Subhas Chandra Bose
(SCB) share very similar facial features and could potentially be one
and the same person. In a level of support scale, the imagery -both
still and moving -lends support, leaning towards strong support, to the
contention that TM and SCB are one and the same person," Miller noted in
the report.
The confirmation could have been stronger
had the resolution of the photographs and video footage been better. In
all the cases, TM appears behind others and, therefore, at a distance
from cameras.
Researchers and Netaji followers in
Kolkata helped Satbhai raise £800 to pay Miller's fee. Though they had
initially tried to rope in an Indian expert, no one was willing to take
it up. They then turned to an international expert, convinced that the
report would be more credible with the examination free of bias.
Once
the report arrived, they followed it up with RTI applications to the
ministry of external affairs inquiring about the identity of TM.The
government initially did not send a reply and then referred the matter
to different desks, which said they had no information.
The
team comprises Netaji's great grand-niece Rajyashri Chowdhury ,
nephrologist Shankar Kumar Chatterjee, researcher Jayanta Chowdhury ,
and Netaji activist Debasish Sen, among others.
