Odisha court relies on DNA test to send POCSO convict to jail
The 65-year-old man was sentenced to 20-year imprisonment for raping and impregnating a 16-year-old girl.
Seven decades have passed since Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose went missing on this date in 1945, with many historians suggesting that he might have died in a plane crash, but the recurring demand to bring back his purported remains
from a temple in Japan for DNA examination has not been met with thus far.
The freedom fighter’s grandnephew, Surya Kumar Bose, issued a statement on Tuesday, making a fresh appeal to authorities to facilitate DNA testing of the ashes that have been interred in Renkoji temple, in an attempt to put
a lid on the controversies surrounding his “disappearance”.
Bose, who lives in Germany, said, “Almost two decades ago in the course of the Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry (JMCI), a precious opportunity to conduct a DNA test and to bring the remains of Netaji home to his beloved motherland, was sadly lost. According to the JMCI Report, the Renkoji authorities were not willing to allow a DNA test of the alleged remains.”
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In his statement, he pointed out that the chief priest of Renkoji Temple, Reverend Nichiko Mochizuki, had written to the Indian embassy in Tokyo in 2005 insisting that the remains be returned. Bose, an IT consultant, further quoted excerpts from a letter was written by Mochizuki, whose father is known to have received the purported remains of Netaji in September 1945, to make his point.
According to the excerpt, Mochizuki told the embassy, “I felt that if I accepted the proposal for DNA testing and the remains are eventually returned to India, my father’s soul and spirit could finally be at rest. In this way, I agree to offer my co-operation for the testing.”
The translation of the chief priest’s original letter was commissioned by Madhuri Bose, Netaji’s grandniece. Renkoji Temple authorities were fully supportive of a DNA test on the remains, Bose maintained.
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