Bhagwanji

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Bhagwanji, also known as Gumnami Baba was a mysterious Indian monk who in 1985 lived at Ram Bhawan in Faizabad, near Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. Till date, his real identity and activities remain obscure. A great number of people maintain that he was the Indian freedom fighter Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, living incognito. People who support such a stand challenge the death of Subhas Chandra Bose in a plane crash in 1945. It is said that Bhagwanji had an uncanny resemblance to Netaji Bose.^[1] Some people believe that Bhagwanji died on September 16, 1985, while some dispute this.

Handwriting analysis expert and former Additional Director of the National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Science, Dr B. Lal deposed before the Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry that probed into the disappearance of Netaji, that the handwritings of Bhagwanji and Bose did match.^[2]^[3] However, the commission did not accept the claim that Bhagwanji was Bose, for want of any clinching evidence. But the commission rejected the official view of the Indian government that Bose died in 1945. But, the obscurity left behind by Bhagwanji makes enough reason for a debate even today.