Tuesday, December 27 2005 17:12 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Kolkata: Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's daughter Anita Pfaff today (Dec 27, 2005) said she believed her father died in the aircraft crash at Taihoku in 1945 and added that she did not expect the Justice Mukherjee Commission to come up with any evidence to the contrary.

"It would be interesting to see what new evidence the (Mukherjee) Commission has come up with I believe that my father died in the plane crash and I do not expect there will be any evidence to the contrary", Pfaff told sources after an interaction here with members of the CII.

Stating that she had read press reports about the Mukherjee Commission proceedings, Pfaff said, "it appears from the reports that the Commission had been flooded by all sorts of views. If you consider the fact that the Shanawaz and Khosla Commissions had concluded that Netaji had died in the Taihoku plane crash, the views do not contribute very much".

Asked how her mother Emilie Schenkel received news of the plane crash, Pfaff said, "she was naturally quite devastated when she heard it on the radio. But she kept up the hope that my father would return some day as he had disappeared on earlier occasions also. She gradually came to terms with the loss when he did not reappear even after Independence".

Earlier, during the interaction with the CII members, Pfaff said that her mother had wanted to come to India and perhaps stay in the country for the rest of her life. "But that did not become possible for various reasons".