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Rajnath Singh, Union home minister, on Tuesday referred August 18 as the death anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, by posting a one-line tribute, “Subhas Chandra Bose ki punyatithi par unhe sadar naman”, in Facebook.

August 18 was the date of the alleged Taihoku air crash in which Subhas Chandra Bose was travelling. But, the air crash theory was demolished by the Justice Mukherjee Commission that was set up by the Vajpayee government. Besides, a section of researchers believe that Netaji could have spent his last years in Russia. Thus, Netaji's followers were angered over the Rajnath’s tribute.

Anuj Dhar, Author and Netaji researcher, said that the disappointment is over the Union minister hunt to legitimize the air crash theory, which the Justice Mukherjee Commission ruled out.

"It was expected that the BJP government will declassify Netaji files and bring out the truth. They had shown the intent, but in reality their actions have not been any different from that of the previous Congress governments. They have used the same language to stonewall our RTI queries," Dhar said.

Dhar said if home minister had went through social networking sites before posting the tribute, he would have come to know that there is a major campaign for declassification (of files). Moreover, August 18 is not accepted as Netaji's death anniversary anymore and has been proved to be a lie.

Singh's post was called 'shameless' and 'irresponsible' on Facebook and was greeted with sarcasm. One post read that, "....just paying lip service to Netaji and biding time for this troublesome issue to be buried.”

-Sumana