The West Bengal government on Friday declassified 64 secret files pertaining to freedom fighter Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and his disappearance in the mid-1940s. The digitised version of the documents will be available to public from Monday.
"64 files relating to Netaji and family members available with Kolkata police and West Bengal Police are kept in Kolkata Police Archive located at first floor of Kolkata Police Museum for viewing by visitors," the government said during the announcement.
"The files related to Netaji have been placed in the Kolkata police museum archive from today. There are 64 files which contain 12744 pages, all files have been digitized," ANI quoted Kolkata Police Commissioner Surajit Kar Purkayastha as saying.
Purkayastha distributed the CDs of digitised Netaji files to the family of Bose and mediapersons. Visitors, including researchers and scholars, at Kolkata Police Museum can now access the files that contains certain "secrets" related to Bose and his family.
64 files relating to Netaji have been kept in Kolkata Police Museum in their original form: Surajit Kar Purkayastha pic.twitter.com/PPOdMD4Xao
— ANI (@ANI_news) September 18, 2015
64 Netaji files kept in Kolkata Police Museum for public viewing (In pic: SC Bose's grandnephew) pic.twitter.com/UPoWOdribi — ANI (@ANI_news) September 18, 2015
WB Govt declassifies 64 files relating to Netaji SC Bose, kept in Kolkata Police Museum for public viewing. pic.twitter.com/wnea7nwm2n
— ANI (@ANI_news) September 18, 2015
WB Govt declassifies 64 files relating to Netaji SC Bose, kept in Kolkata Police Museum for public viewing. pic.twitter.com/LrLGDArG0n — ANI (@ANI_news) September 18, 2015
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had on Thursday announced that her government will declassify 64 Netaji files on 18 September.
"A total 64 files are there with us. There may be one or two more files also which would also be put in the public domain. After properly reviewing all the files, we have decided to put them in public domain from next Friday (September 18)," Banerjee said at the state secretariat on Thursday, PTI reported.
Clarifying on the security concerns, Banerjee said that the nation would face no threat if the files are declassified.
"We don't feel that there is anything related to internal security in the files.Everybody wants to know what happened to Netaji. He was a brave son of our soil and he was from Bengal," she said.
Banerjee had said that the files were digitised to preserve history.