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In ‘Gumnaami’ trailer, a question mark over Subhas Chandra Bose’s death

Did Subhas Chandra Bose die in a plane crash on August 18, 1945, in Taiwan?

While the evidence suggests that he did, conspiracy theories have kept alive the possibility that Bose somehow escaped the crash and went into hiding. One theory is that Bose lived as a nameless holy man (known as Gumnami Baba) in the Uttar Pradesh town of Faizabad. This claim was investigated by the government-backed Mukherjee Commission investigation (1999-2005). DNA studies concluded that the man in Faizabad could not be Bose.

Srijit Mukherji’s Gumnaami, to be released on October 2 in Bengali and Hindi, gets its title from this debunked theory, draws its material from the Mukherjee Commission investigation. The commission concluded that Bose did not die in the plane crash. In 2006, the government rejected the findings of the commission’s report.

Prosenjit Chatterjee plays Bose in Mukherji’s film. The trailer follows glimpses from an investigation into Bose’s death.

Chatterjee’s depiction of Bose in Gumnaami comes two years after Rajkummar Rao played the Indian National Army leader in the web series Bose: Dead Alive, and Kenny Basumatary appeared as the nationalist in Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Raag Desh.