President Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday unveiled the Wanderer Car used by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose during his ‘Great Escape’ from Kolkata to the Gomoh railway station between January 16 and 18, 1941. He also got into the car, restored by Audi, and took a seat next to the driver.
Sugata Bose, MP and a professor of history at Harvard University, who presided over the event, said the President did not want to sit on the rear seat, where Netaji had sat during the ‘Great Escape.’
Mr. Mukherjee said Netaji’s name “is the most emotive issue in the Indian political arena, and especially in Bengal.”
Krishna Bose, wife of Sisir Kumar Bose who drove Netaji to Gomoh (now in Jharkhand), said: “The Azad Hind movement started as the car drove out of the house” on Elgin Road which now houses Netaji Research Bureau.
Ms. Bose’s son and Mr. Sugata Bose’s younger brother Sumantra Bose read out the excepts from the writings of Sisir Kumar Bose on how Netaji, disguised as Mohd Ziauddin, a north Indian insurance agent, had kept the door of the car open. The idea was that the family members and others in the house could hear the noise of only one door being shut so that they would think that only one person had left in the car.
Netaji kept pouring coffee for Sisir Kumar Bose during the long drive and a petrol spill shut the engine down for a while and caused Netaji much anxiety.
