New Delhi: Politicians of the country commit a familiar blunder every year on August 18; this year was no exception but for the fact that those who got it wrong were fewer in number. These ‘leaders’ — or the bureaucrats who handle their Twitter handles — pay tributes to Subhas Chandra Bose on what they believe is Netaji’s “death anniversary”!

Making it to this dubious list of netas is Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. He tweeted this morning

Then, there was Hansraj Ahir, the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs. He wrote

Union Minister for Tribal Affairs Jual Oram did it, too.

The facts of the so-called air crash that had killed Bose are as follows. In 2005, the government of Taiwan denied any plane had crashed in their territory on August 18, 1945.

Journalist-turned-activist Anuj Dhar has said and written, with evidence, on several platforms that, indeed, there was no air crash anywhere in the world on August 18, 1945.

Rediff reported in 2006 that Mission Netaji, the pressure group created to make Union and State governments bring out the truths about Bose “alleges that the two commissions set up by the Government of India to probe Netaji's death — the 1956 Shah Nawaz Committee and the 1970 GD Khosla Commission — were not earnest in their intent, ignored crucial circumstantial evidence, and didn't even speak to the Taiwan government.”

Rediff continued, “The third probe — the Justice MK Mukherjee Commission which was formed in 1999 in response to a public interest litigation — has submitted its report to the government. The report is expected to be tabled in the ongoing session of Parliament.”

Mercifully, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley did not post a tribute to Netaji on his “death anniversary” today. He had two years ago, only to be thoroughly embarrassed later, pulling down the tweet and Facebook update.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee got it partially right. She did not claim Netaji had died this day in 1945.

Where the supreme leader of the TMC got it wrong was in the flight details. It is doubtful that the flight that she claimed Subhas Bose was a passenger in actually carried Netaji.

Justice Manoj Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry, instituted by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, reported:

"It stands established that emplaning at Saigon on August 17, 1945, Netaji succeeded in evading the Allied Forces and escaping out of their reach and as a camouflage thereof the entire make-believe story of the air crash, Netaji's death therein and his cremation was engineered by the Japanese army authorities including the two doctors and Habibur Rahman and then aired on August 23, 1945, … Whether Netaji thereafter landed in Russia or elsewhere cannot be answered for (a) dearth of evidence."

Tsan Pi Sha is supposed to be the name of the nurse who had treated a 'dying' Bose. In the book India's Biggest Cover-Up, Dhar writes, "There was no evidence that a nurse by the name of Tsan Pi Sha ever worked in the hospital where Bose had reportedly died."

"...nurse Tsan Pi Sha was not the only fictional character in Harin Shah’s story. Khosla wrote in his report that 'when I went to the crematorium at Taipei and interviewed the son of the original caretaker, I showed him a photograph appearing at page 99 of Harin Shah's book and asked him if the man represented there was his father. The young man denied that the photograph was that of his father'," Dhar writes in the book.

The Mukherjee commission concluded that the reported ashes of Netaji kept at the Renkoji temple were of a Japanese soldier Ichiro Okura.