Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose's statue partly damaged, smeared with coal tar in Birbhum

Kolkata: A newly built statue of great freedom fighter Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose was partly vandalised and smeared with coal tar in West Bengal’s Birbhum district on Tuesday.

The statue was supposed to be unveiled on the Independence Day.

The Netaji statue was to be installed in the Panchra village panchayat office compound.

Police confirmed that the statue was smeared with coal tar and face was partly damaged.

In a reply to a Right To Information (RTI) query, the government had earlier said that Netaji died in a plane crash on August, 18 1945.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) admitted of Netaji dying in the plane crash while replying to a RTI query filed by Sayak Sen in May 2017.

However, a MHA spokesperson had later said, "There was a conclusion in 2006 that Netaji was dead. The RTI reply was based on that conclusion. However, the issue is not closed. Any new fact, if it comes up, will be examined by the government on merit and appropriate decision taken." 

In October 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had met the family members of Netaji and announced that the government would declassify the files relating to the leader whose disappearance 70 years ago remains a mystery.

Last year, on Netaji's 119th birth anniversary on January 23, as many as 100 secret files were made public by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

While two commissions of inquiry had concluded that Netaji had died in a plane crash in Taipei on August 18, 1945, a third probe panel, headed by Justice M K Mukherjee, had contested it and suggested that Bose was alive.