In 1999, the Manoj Mukherjee Commission was set up to find out whether Subhash Chandra Bose had indeed died in the air crash of 1945. The Mukherjee panel was the third commission to look into the very same matter. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had constituted the Shah Nawaz Commission and Indira Gandhi the Khosla Commission. Years later, Mukherjee concluded that Bose had not died in the air crash, but had since expired. Considering that in 1999 Bose would have been 102 years old, it needed no great investigative skill to make the claim that Bose had probably passed away. But the commission was not able to enlighten us as to the circumstances of Bose’s death, though it visited Japan, Britain, Germany and a few other places in search of the truth. Incidentally, the government rejected the Mukherjee Commission’s findings. Does this mean there is scope for yet another commission on the subject?

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi asked G.T. Nanavati to inquire into the burning of the Sabharmati Express bogies in 2002 in which 58 passengers died. Six years later, the judge concluded that the train was set on fire because of a conspiracy. But before the commission gave its report, the U.C. Banerjee Commission, set up by then-Railway Minister Lalu Prasad, came to the diametrically opposite conclusion, that the fire in the train was accidental. This only reinforces the suspicion that those who institute commissions select judges they believe will reflect their point of view.

The Thakkar-Natarajan Commission instituted to investigate the assassination of Indira Gandhi pointed the “needle of suspicion” in many different directions, but came up with few definite conclusions. One of those at whom the needle pointed was R.K. Dhawan, Gandhi’s loyal factotum. That no one took the report seriously is clear from the fact that Dhawan was subsequently appointed a minister in the Narasimha Rao government and remains a senior member of the Congress.

... contd.