When Sarv. Radhakrishnan met Netaji in USSR in the 1950s

Former Director of erstwhile Information Service of India and an Indian diplomat talks about a very interesting meeting that Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan had with Subhash Bose in the 1950s – long after Netaji was declared dead – on Mission Netaji.  An account worth reading:

The fact is: Netaji had crossed over to the Soviet Union somewhere on the Soviet-Manchurian border, where he was taken into custody by the Soviet Frontier Guards. This was stated by none other than Babajan Gouffrav, a member of the Soviet Union’s Politburo – the highest policy making authority in the Soviet Union. Gouffrav was also the Director of the Institute of the Oriental Studies in Moscow, and a leading member of Uzbek politics. Babajan Gouffrav had visited India several times and was conversant with the political scene in India. He was a close friend of Professor Ram Rahul of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, who visited Soviet Union Several times, and who I also knew for years.

According to Babajan Gouffrav, India’s Ambassador in Moscow Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was allowed to see Netaji some where in the Soviet Union on the condition that the Ambassador would not talk and mutely converse in any manner with Netaji. After this strange meeting, Ambassador Radhakrishnan informed Prime Minister Nehru about Netaji’s presence in the Soviet Union. This fact came to be known and speculations were rife in New Delhi about the ways and means of securing the release of Netaji from the Soviet custody, but nothing was done at the official level to secure Netaji’s release. Thus ended one dark chapter in the history of free India.