25 more secret Netaji files may be released on Feb 23

New Delhi: Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma on Sunday said that the second tranche of 25 secret files on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is likely to be declassified later this month.

When asked about declassification of the Netaji files, Sharma said, "We are going to release 25 secret files every month. We are ready with the files that are going to be released this month."

The government had earlier said National Archives of India (NAI) would release digital copies of declassified files on Bose every month. As many as hundred secret files were made public by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Netaji's 119th birth anniversary on January 23.

The next set of secret Netaji files is likely to be made public on February 23. It is also expected that the files will be released on 23rd of every month afterwards, a source said.

The files, released last month, comprised over 16,600 pages of historic documents, ranging from those of the British Raj to as late as 2007, an official had said.

NAI also opened a dedicated website to store all the declassified files related to Bose.

In October last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had met the family members of Netaji and announced that the government would declassify the files relating to the leader whose disappearance 70 years ago remains a mystery.

While two commissions of inquiry had concluded that Netaji had died in a plane crash in Taipei on August 18, 1945, a third probe panel, headed by Justice M K Mukherjee, had contested it and suggested that Bose was alive after that.