Vishnu Sahai Commission report fails to identify Gumnami Baba, mystery over Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose continues

The mystery over the death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and the question if Bose is in fact Gumnami Baba continues even after several decades of India's independence. While many people believe that he died in a plane crash in 1945, others argue that Bose took the guise of Gumnami Baba and lived in Uttar Pradesh till 1985.

Several researchers and scholars believe that Gumnami Baba is in fact Netaji, however, this has not been confirmed by the government so far, nor any concrete evidence has emerged on this matter. Gumnami Baba, who lived in Ram Bhavan in UP's Ayodhya, in his last years, had many similar qualities to that of Netaji--his voice, knowledge, music, cigars, Bengali food are all similar to Netaji.

Seeing the demand of the public, the Akhilesh Yadav government had formed the Justice Vishnu Sahai Commission in 2016 after the order of Allahabad High Court for the investigation report of Gumnami Baba.

The main task of the Commission was to find out what is the real identity of Gumnami Baba. After three years, the Commission presented its report in the Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha which the government has accepted. The Yogi Adityanath government has made the report public and stated that the commission couldn't identify Gumnami Baba alias Bhagwan Ji, however, the Commission has drawn several conclusions about Gumnami Baba.

They are--1) Gumnami Baba was a Bengali and he knew Bangla, English and Hindi, 2) He was extraordinarily talented, 3) Books in Bengali, English and Hindi have been recovered from Gumnami Baba's Ram Bhavan, 4) Gumnami Baba had a deep knowledge of war, politics and current affairs, 5) The voice of Gumnami Baba had a sense of authority like the voice of Netaji,
6) Gumnami Baba had as great will and patience, 7) In Ayodhya, he didn't appear in the public sphere for 10 years, 8) Those who used to listen to Gumnami Baba from behind the scenes were hypnotized, 9) Gumnami Baba used to spend time in worship and meditation, 10) He was a lover of music, cigars and food, and 11) Gumnami Baba was a follower of Netaji but the moment it started circulating that he was Netaji he immediately changed his house.

The Sahai Commission report, in its conclusion, has written that Gumnami Baba was a brilliant man and people like him are very rare, who prefer death instead of revealing the secret of their identity. But his funeral was organized in such a way that only 13 persons could attend it. The identity of Baba Baba still remains anonymous. 

Reacting to the Sahai Commission report, author Anuj Dhar said, "We totally dismiss the Vishnu Sahai Commission's report. They just found a letter by a lady who they interpreted that it was not written to Gumnami Baba. Later, a newspaper did a story on the same where the lady confessed to having written the letter to Gumnami baba identifying him as Netaji. They have concluded in the report that Gumnami Baba is not Netaji, then I want to ask them who then is Gumnami Baba? Kindly clear the identity of Gumnami Baba who he was?"

Dhar, who has written several books on Netaji also added, "This report is completely in contrast to the Mukherjee commission's report. In that report, it was said that Gumnami Baba was Netaji and enough evidence has been shown to prove that he is Gumnami Baba. We have time and again written to the UP government, but they have not even acknowledged our mails. There were certain documents that we demanded from the CIA which they provided and we forwarded it to the UP government, but they have still haven't written back to us."

The author is also the founder of an organisation, Mission Netaji, which campaigns for the declassification of documents concerning Bose.