Roads to Delhi 265land.^53 During a visit to Bangkok a few days later, he appointed A. D.
Loganathan the chief commissioner of these islands. According to
Hugh Toye, the people of Thailand were “at their best, charming, hos-
pitable, generous, eager to do honor to one who, none dared doubt,
would soon march invincibly into India.”^54
Before the close of 1943, Netaji’s secret agents had already reached
Calcutta. Soon after his arrival in Singapore, he had felt the need for a
wireless link with Bengal. The spies that the Japanese had sent into In-
dia had not been very successful. Bose tried to assert control over intel-
ligence operations based in Penang and Rangoon, and put N. G. Swami
in charge of what came to be called the Azad School. In March, four
well- trained intelligence operatives—Bhagwan Lu, Harbans Lal, Kan-
wal Singh, and Kartar Singh—had accompanied Swami on the journey
from Europe to Asia on the blockade runner S.S. Osorno. On Decem-
ber 8, Bose, Swami, and Hasan put these four together with another
four trained in Penang, and dispatched this group of eight under the
leadership of S. N. Chopra toward India on board a Japanese subma-
rine.^55
The group landed with weapons, money, and sophisticated wireless
equipment on the Kathiawar coast of Gujarat on the night of Decem-
ber 22–23, 1943. They had been instructed to split into four pairs and
head toward Bengal, the North- West Frontier, the United Provinces in
northern India, and Bombay. Late in December, Bhagwan Lu—under
cover of his pseudonym, T. K. Rao—called at Woodburn Park in Cal-
cutta to see Sisir Kumar Bose, the nephew who had driven Subhas dur-
ing his January 1941 escape. After a spell in prison for taking part in
the Quit India movement, Sisir was sentenced to house arrest with per-
mission to travel to medical college for his studies. The family was in
mourning, since Prabhabati, the matriarch, had just passed away. Rao
handed Sisir a handwritten message in Bengali from Subhas, on the let-
terhead of the Indian Inde pen dence League at 3 Chancery Lane in
Singapore, dated “Sri Sri Kali Puja,” October 29, 1943—the day of the
worship of the mother goddess Kali. Subhas had told Sarat and Sisir
that his messages in Bengali would be genuine, while those in En glish
might be intended to mislead the British. Both Sisir and his mother,