Death of Subhas Chandra Bose In the consensus of scholarly opinion , the death of Subhas Chandra Bose occurred from third - degree burns on 18 August 1945 after his overloaded Japanese plane crashed in Japanese - occupied Taiwan ( then called " Formosa " ) . However , many among his supporters , especially in Bengal , refused then , and have refused since , to believe either the fact or the circumstances of his death . Conspiracy theories appeared within hours of his death and have had a long shelf life , keeping alive various martial myths about Bose . Introduction . Subhas Chandra Bose , a prominent leader of the Indian independence movement that sought an end to the British Raj , was reported to be flying to Tokyo with Tsunamasa Shidei , a general of the Imperial Japanese army , when their plane crashed at Matsuyama aerodrome ( now Songshan Airport ) in Taipei , northern Formosa ( now Taiwan ) . After cremation , Bose ' s ashes were taken to Japan and interred at the Renkōji Temple in Tokyo . The news was withheld by the Japanese government for five days before being announced by a Japanese news agency , Domei . After India ' s independence , the matter was looked into by three official panels formed by the government of India following the public demands . These panels were : Shah Nawaz Committee , Justice GD Khosla Commission & Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry . The Shah Nawaz Committee and the Justice GD Khosla Commission upheld the Taiwan crash version . The Mukherjee Commission ' s report concluded that Bose was not killed in an airplane accident , but the report was not accepted by the government . There have been allegations that the Indian Intelligence Bureau had doctored an intelligence report to " prove " Bose ' s death . However , it has also been alleged at various times that the Indian government and political leadership was aware that Bose may have been alive , and according to one theory , in captivity in Soviet Union , but chose to ignore or actively collaborate to suppress this information after Independence . Shah Nawaz Committee ( 1956 ) . In April 1956 , the formed a committee headed by Shah Nawaz Khan . Khan had earlier risen to the rank of Lt Col in the Second Indian National Army , before he was captured by allied troops after the fall of Hind and was one of the three charged with treason in the Red Fort Trial . He was thus seen as an appropriate person to head the inquiry . Two other members of the inquiry commission were SN Mitra and Suresh Chandra Bose , Bose ' s elder brother . The committee ' s report that Bose had indeed died in Taipei became disputed due to several reasons . The most important among them was the dissentient report of Suresh Bose . Suresh Bose refused to agree with the findings of his colleagues and accused them and the Government of India of trying to coerce him into agreeing with their views . In mid - 1990s the released archives of Indian Political Intelligence proved conclusively that Bose was killed in 1945 . Since rumours were circulating that he was still alive , Indian Political Intelligence arranged for Military Intelligence in New Delhi to investigate the matter . Captain Turner of the War Crimes Liaison Section in Taiwan ( formerly called Formosa ) was put on to the case and he managed to locate the last person to have seen Bose alive . This was Captain ( Medical ) , who was under arrest in Stanley He gave a statement that resolved the matter : ‘ I personally cleaned his injuries with oils and dressed them . He was suffering from extensive burns over the whole of his body , though the most serious were those on his head , chest and thighs . During the first four hours he was semi - conscious . . . he murmured , and muttered in his state of coma , but never regained consciousness . At about 2300 hrs he died . I injected Formalin into the body and also had the coffin partly filled with lime . ’ The coffin was then taken away and Bose ' s body was cremated . G . D . Khosla Commission . The Khosla Commission was set up in 1970 to probe the disappearance of Bose . The commission concluded that Bose died in the plane crash . The report was accepted by the Indian government , then led by Indira Gandhi . Later , protests by M . P . s during the prime ministership of Morarji Desai resulted in Desai saying that " " The Shah Nawaz Committee and the Khosla Commission hold the report of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose ' s death following a plane crash as true . Since then , reasonable doubts have been cast on the correctness in the two reports and various important contradictions in the testimony of the witnesses have been noticed . Some further contemporary official documentary records have also become available . In the light of those doubts and contradictions and those records , government finds it difficult to accept that the earlier conclusions are decisive . " Mukherjee Commission ( 1999 ) . In 1999 , following a court order , the Bharatiya Janata Party led Indian government formed a one - man board called the Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry . It was headed by Justice ( rtd ) M . K . Mukherjee of the Supreme Court of India . The commission perused hundreds of files on Bose ' s death drawn from several countries and also visited Japan , Russia and Taiwan . Mukherjee ' s findings were that the news of Bose ' s death in Taipei was a cover - up for his escape to the USSR . The Commission , however , stated that they could not confirm Bose ' s presence in the USSR for want of evidence . The Mukherjee Commission submitted its report to Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil on November 8 , 2005 . The report was tabled in the Indian Parliament on May 17 , 2006 . The Congress Party led Indian Government rejected the findings of the Commission . External links . < div class = " references - small " >