The investigative work of a Gujarati journalist provided first incontrovertible proof that Subhas Bose died after a plane crash at Taipei, capital of Taiwan on 18 August 1945.
Harin Shah, a foreign correspondent of Mumbai's then premier daily, Free Press Journal, visited Taipei in 1946 or a year after the accident. He thoroughly probed the matter, interviewing various people who had first-hand knowledge of the accident and the consequent demise of Bose. This included crucially an interview with a Taiwanese nurse Tsan Pi Sha who attended to Bose when he was brought to a Japanese military hospital after suffering third degree burns while escaping from the aircraft.
Shah's pioneering despatches were published in the Free Press Journal in September 1946. He thereafter wrote a book on the subject, which was called Verdict From Formosa (which was the Japanese name for Taiwan).
Shah met and spoke to Tsan Pi Sha at the very hospital where Bose breathed his last. She began by telling him in no uncertain terms: “He died here. I was by his side….. He died on 18 August last year (1945), (Subhas) Chandra Bose.”
She added: “I am a surgical nurse and took care of him till he died…..I was instructed to apply olive oil all over his body and that I did.”
She further continued: “Whenever he regained briefly his consciousness, he felt thirsty. With slight groaning, he would ask for water. I gave him water several times.”
She, then, took Shah to the south-west corner of the ward and to the bed in the hospital where Bose passed away.
Wanting to be doubly certain, Shah asked: “So you definitely know that he is dead?” She replied, according to Shah, with a tone of rebuke: “Yes, he died. I have told everything about it. I can prove that he died.”
