A Life Immortal 309swered on November 7, when General MacArthur’s headquarters sent
him a notice through the Japanese Foreign Office that he was wanted
in India by Mountbatten’s headquarters, in connection with the Red
Fort trial. On November 19, Ayer and Habibur Rahman were flown
in an American aircraft from Tokyo to Delhi, to be witnesses at the
trial. Upon their arrival in Delhi on November 22, Habib gave Ayer a
nudge as the red sandstone ramparts of the fort came into view. That
was where Netaji was to have held his victory parade after hoisting the
Indian tricolor. They were greeted with shouts of “Jai Hind!” as soon
as they entered the wire- netting enclosure inside the fort, called the
“cage.” Once inside their cage in the Red Fort, Ayer gulped down a cup
of tea and then devoured the Indian newspapers from November 5
onward, which were full of stories about the INA. “The INA had liter-
ally burst on the country,” he discovered, “and the whole country from
the Hi ma la yas to Cape Comorin was aflame with an enthusiastic fer-
vor, unprecedented in its his tory.” When he saw the papers in front of
him, he felt “sad beyond words that Netaji was not alive and not in
Delhi to see for himself how all India had gone mad over his miracu-
lous feats in East Asia.”^12
While Indians reacted with shock, grief, and disbelief, the British
authorities in India had received the news of Bose’s death with a sense
of relief. Now that their most uncompromising opponent was probably
out of the way, they approved in mid- September 1945 the release of
Sarat Chandra Bose and other members of the Bose family, who were
being held long after most po lit i cal prisoners had been released. Soon
after the end of the war, New Delhi had sent two groups of intelligence
of fi cers, led by Finney and Davies, to Southeast Asia to conduct in quir-
ies and to arrest Bose, if he was alive. Ironically, these groups included
two Bengali police of fi cers named H. K. Roy and K. P. De. Mr. Davies’
team, which included H. K. Roy, went first to Saigon and then to Tai-
pei in September 1945. They interviewed the Japanese military of fi cer
in charge of the Saigon airport, military of fi cers at the Taipei airport,
and the chief medical of fi cer at the Taipei hospital. The team that went
to Bangkok seized a telegram dated August 20 from the chief of staff
of the Japanese Southern Army in Saigon to the of fi cer- in- charge of
the Hikari Kikan in Bangkok; it contained the news of the crash on the