The Tale of Netaji’s Missing Treasures and the Nehru Govt’s Refusal To Recover Them

“For war you need three things: money, money, and money”.

Netaji had no intention to depend on the Japanese for the Indian National Army (INA) finances in its war against the British. He collected resources from Indian residents in Southeast Asia. And they came in thousands. Regular collection drives were made and large funds were collected and kept with the Netaji Fund Committee under the minister of revenue of the Provisional Government of Azad Hind.

After Japan’s surrender ended World War II, at 8 am on August 16, 1945, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, from Singapore, cabled Debnath Das, the general secretary of the Indian Independence League (IIL) at Bangkok, to take care of the INA treasures and keep it secretly. The treasures were mostly jewellery, gold bars and gold trinkets, received as donations. Das moved the treasures under the guard of the INA military police to Netaji’s residence just outside the city.

On arriving in Bangkok before noon, Netaji went straight to the IIL headquarters and made arrangements for disbursement of two to three months advance salary for the INA and IIL personnel, donations to Thai-Bharat Cultural lodge and the Indian Association.

Japan’s surrender was not INA’s surrender. In the evening, he called a meeting of all INA and IIL officers at his residence. There, he announced his decision to leave Bangkok for an “adventure into the unknown” with S.A. Ayer, Debnath Das, Colonel Habibur Rahman, Captain Gulzara Singh, Colonel Pritam Singh and Major Abid Hasan, to continue the struggle for freedom and asked them to report at his residence with their belongings early in the morning.

Also read: Netaji Stood for Unity Among All Indians, Something That the BJP Tries To Hide

The treasures

Later that night, he sat with his personal valet Kundan Singh and Abid Hasan with the treasures. Netaji repackaged the treasures in four iron boxes. The boxes, according to Kundan Singh, weighed 2 to 2½ maunds (75-90 kg).

Early on August 17, Netaji and his six associates flew out of Bangkok with the boxes and reached Saigon at around 9 am. At Saigon, they were in trouble as there was no plane for their further journey. The plane that Netaji often used, named ‘Azad Hind’, had been grounded in April 1945 after it was badly damaged.

However, there was one plane, a bomber, en route to Tokyo with some passengers which would touch down at Saigon. Netaji was offered a seat there but he refused as he wanted to travel with his full team. Negotiations with the Japanese continued after the plane arrived, and as a result, Netaji’s companion Habibur Rahman got a seat. Netaji discarded some of his luggage as he wanted to take more companions. He ordered the remaining five to report at the airport with their kit to accompany, in case some more seats become available.

Netaji’s insistence to get more seats continued at the airport. He waited for his car carrying his baggage, much to the annoyance of the Japanese who were in a hurry to leave. When the car arrived, seeing the bags to be exceptionally heavy, Lieutenant Colonel Nonogaki, himself a pilot and co-passenger in the flight, told Netaji, “Either the additional (third) person could accompany him or the boxes.” Netaji went for the boxes. Without any delay, Debnath Das and Pritam Singh catapulted the bags into an almost moving plane. Nonogaki had lifted the boxes and found them to be around 20 kg each.

The next day, August 18, at Taihoku, Formosa (Taiwan), the most unfortunate incident in the INA’s three-year history happened. The bomber crashed at the airfield while taking off at around 2:30 pm, killing Netaji and five other Japanese.

Salvaging the treasures

The INA treasures lay scattered on the ground where the plane fell. Major K. Sakai, officer commanding (OC) of the aerodrome defence and Captain Nakamura, OC of the aerodrome, cordoned off the area and salvaged whatever treasures they could. They were mostly burnt jewellery.

The collected materials “were put into an 18 litre petroleum can”, which weighed around 16 kg, according to Sakai, sealed and brought to the army headquarters. The contents were put in a wooden box by Lieutenant Colonel Shibuya, nailed down and later sent under the custody of Lieutenant Colonel Sakai, along with Bose’s remains, to Tokyo on September 5, 1945. The jewellery boxes were handed over to Ramamurti, IIL president, by Lieutenant Colonel Takakura on September 8, 1945.

In the last week of September 1945, Habibur and Ramamurti opened the box, size 15”x15”x20”, cleaned and weighed the jewellery. The weight was 11 kg, (plus 300 gm of gold brought in by Ayer separately from Saigon). The weight was noted down and signed.

The boxes remained with Ramamurti in Tokyo for six years till September 24, 1951 when it was handed over to the Indian Liaison Mission, after which it was delivered to New Delhi.

What came to India on November 10, 1952 was the same 11 kg of charred jewellery and 300 gm of gold which is now lying in the National Museum’s vault. Nehru remarked, “I saw this ‘treasure’. It made a poor show.” The vault was later opened twice for inspection, the first time in 1956 by the Shahnawaz Khan Enquiry Committee for Kundan Singh to identify the items, and then on October 9, 1978 for inspection by some MPs during Moraraji Desai’s tenure as prime minister. The treasures were weighed and they more or less tallied with the weight Habibur recorded in end-September 1945.

Also read: The Netaji Mystery: Marking the End of Another ‘Baba’ Story

The quantity of treasures

There is no documented record of how much treasure Netaji carried, how much was recovered from the airfield and how much was handed over to Ramamurti at Tokyo. Records are generally destroyed so that they do not fall into enemy hands. But some assessment can be made.

Much to his dislike, Netaji was weighed (65-80 kg) against gold on his birthday in 1945. Dinanath, chairman of the Azad Hind Bank in Rangoon, said 140 lb (64 kg) of gold was taken away when the INA retreated on April 24, 1945. Kundan Singh said the four boxes Netaji took with him from Bangkok weighed 75-90 kg (i.e. 59 to 74 kg ornaments after deducting the weight of the four boxes, 4 kg each). Taking a cue from these three sources which do not vary much and applying the law of averages, we get a rough estimate that Netaji started his journey with nearly 70 kg of treasures.

To reduce baggage load for an overloaded plane, he kept behind some of his luggage in Saigon and took two boxes into the fateful plane. Nonogaki, who lifted the boxes inside the plane, said they weighed around 20 kg each. Minus the weight of two boxes (4 kg/box), the treasures that entered the plane with Netaji weighed 32 kg. Thus, the remaining 38 kg was left behind at Saigon.

The petroleum can weighed 16 kg. Minus the weight of the can (2 kg), the weight of the treasures in it works out to approximately 14 kg, i.e. 3 kg more than the quantity Habibur weighed in end-September 1945 and what came to India in 1952.

Leakage points

The apparent leakage points, therefore, are:

• Saigon, August 17, 1945 onwards: 38 kg left behind (Ayer deposited just 300 gm of gold in Tokyo). None of the five associates of Netaji who remained back in Saigon till August 20 make any mention of the existence of any valuables;
• Airfield at Taihoku, August 18: 18 kg lost. Netaji was carrying 32 kg in the plane but the salvaged quantity was 14 kg. Some quantity got melted and merged with the fuselage;
• at Ramamurti’s residence: 3 kg reduction, between September 8, 1945 and before Habibur weighed the materials as 11 kg.

A staggering 59 kg of treasure was missing. The 3 kg reduction could have been ignored as all values are few-kilogram approximation but for the public uproar in Japan against Ramamurti, suspicion remains.

Complaints of misappropriation of ‘Netaji collections’

Many Indians and Japanese issued signed statements on the disappearance of the “Netaji collections”. The Indian Liaison Mission at Tokyo, K.K. Chettur, in December 1947 reported to the external affairs ministry about the misappropriation of “Netaji’s collection” by Ramamurti.

But, to this, the Nehru government’s response was “the Government of India can hardly claim the assets of the IIL as its own and this is, therefore, a matter in which we cannot proceed officially”. (That the matter of ownership has not been resolved yet even after 75 years of independence is demonstrated at the end of this article.)

The matter resurfaced in 1951 when Chettur reported about the comparative affluence of Ramamurti since 1946, when all other Indian nationals were suffering great hardships in Tokyo; Captain Thairatatte’s farming venture in Sandal and Colonel Figgess, military attache of the British Mission in Tokyo, blossoming out into an Oriental curio expert and collector of object d’art. Chettur also mentioned Ayer’s arrival from Saigon in 1945 with a reported “two big suitcases containing personal effects of Bose” but ultimately adding just 300 gm of gold to the ‘treasures’.

What happened to the 59 kg of INA treasures remains unknown.  

The usual suspect  

In 1978, Subramanian Swamy of then Janata Dal, told the press, claiming “full responsibility and supporting evidence”, that on arrival of INA treasures from Japan in November 1952, Prime Minister Nehru melted all of them in Allahabad and credited them to his personal account.

When it came to providing “supporting evidence”, Swamy did nothing in this regard in the past 43 years nor did he lodge any complaint.

Funds of INA and IIL

The West Bengal government in 1953 passed a resolution asking the Union government to take steps to investigate the fate of the funds left by Netaji and the INA. In response, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru sent a detailed action taken report to the chief minister Dr B.C. Roy on October 18, 1953, the summary of which is as follows:

The money received in Malay (Strait $44,212) was put in a Bank in the name of a Trust ‘Indian Relief Committee’ (IRC) formed by Nehru in 1946. The accrued money was being utilised as scholarships for students of Indian origin in Malay.

Valuables (Strait $147,163) belonging to the INA seized by the Allies were with the Custodian of Enemy Property at Singapore. Pakistan claimed a portion of the asset and it was agreed that the same will be divided at a ratio of 2:1. When the money gets recovered, it will be added to the IRC Fund.

The IIL Fund confiscated by the British in Thailand (Ticals 258,822) was received by the Indian Embassy there in 1950 and deposited in a Bank. The amount was being utilised for educational purposes.

The unspent amount of quarantine charges (Strait $244,270 and Rs 2,512) collected by shipping companies from passengers from Bombay and Calcutta departing for Malaya, were also added to the IRC Fund.

An Indian merchant in Singapore, Hardial Singh, possessed 5.634 kg of gold belonging to the INA. He renounced all claims to the gold and on April 6, 1946 and deposited the gold in Nehru’s name to a Bank which became part of ‘enemy property’. The custodian of enemy property later decided to return the gold. Pakistan’s claim of one-third of all INA assets was met by Nehru in November 1953, agreeing to sell the gold and meet the bilateral arrangement.

Can the government claim INA and IIL assets as its own?  

The question of whether the moveable properties of the Provisional Government of Azad Hind abroad, the INA, IIL and of Netaji Subhas Bose, could be treated as treasures in favour of the Union of India and taken over by the Indian Treasury was not only lingering in 1947, delaying Nehru’s decision to take possession of the same, but it is still in suspension.

Also read: As Modi, Mamata Battle Over Netaji’s Legacy, a Look at His Thoughts on India and Communalism

In 2016, a PIL (WP 672 of 2016) was filed in the Calcutta high court seeking an order directing the Union government to take over the assets of the INA. The petition was disposed of on January 10, 2020. The court “could foresee that there is a likelihood of claims or disputes that may be raised on behalf of the estate of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose”. Thus, the court gave one year to the government to conclude finally what it proposes to do with the moveable assets of the INA. Nothing has been heard since then.

No inquiry after 76 years can recover the lost treasures nor can the feasibility of identifying the perpetrators be guaranteed. But this all goes to show that the hard earned INA treasures that Netaji collected, in cash and in kind, for the war of independence could not have gone astray had Netaji remained in any part of the world after 1945.

Sumeru Roy Chaudhury is an architecture graduate from IIT, Kharagpur. He was the chief architect of the CPWD. He has studied the Netaji files and related documents in detail.