Netaji's kin meets Rajnath Singh, requests declassification of all files

New Delhi: Sugata Bose, the great grandnephew of one of India's eminent freedom fighters Subhash Chandra Bose, on Tuesday met Home Minister Rajnath Singh over the surveillance issue and requested him to declassify all files related to Netaji.

Sugata Bose said he has put forth a request in front of the home minister that all files, even if they are more than 50-year-old, should be declassified.

“I said that all files that are more than 50 years old should be declassified,” ANI quoted him as saying.

“Declassification of files shouldn’t be selective,” he added.

Bose had yesterday said that he was seeking permission from Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan to bring up this issue in the Parliament.

"Keeping the family under surveillance for 20 years was very bad. My father, Shishir Kumar Bose, wrote letters to Netaji's wife, they even kept those under surveillance. Even the letters Netaji's wife wrote back were sent to the intelligence," he added.

The meeting comes a day after another Netaji's grandnephew and family spoksperson Chandra Bose confirmed that the family members of Netaji's will meet Prime Minster Narendra Modi on May 17 and press for the declassification of secret files on Netaji lying with the central and state governments.

Surya Kumar Bose, another Netaji's grandnephew and elder brother of Chandra Bose had met PM Modi in Berlin earlier this month and sought declassification of all secret files amid a row over reported snooping on the leader's close relatives.

Earlier, two declassified Intelligence Bureau files had revealed that former PM Jawaharlal Nehru-led government had order surveillance on Netaji's kin between 1948 and 1968. The files reveal that the IB had resumed British-era surveillance on the two Bose family homes in Calcutta at Woodburn Park and Elgin Road.