Gumnami Baba was finally settled in a Ram Bhavan home in Faizabad in 1983, where he reportedly died on 16 September 1985 and was cremated two days later on 18 September.
Surprisingly, there is no evidence that any person actually died. There is no death certificate, no photograph of the dead body and no people present during the cremation. It doesn’t even have a burn certificate.
In fact, Gumnami Baba’s death was not known to the people until, 42 days after his supposed death.
His life and death both remained shrouded in mystery and no one knows why.
A local newspaper, Janmorcha, had earlier conducted an investigation into the matter. They found no evidence that Gumnami Baba was Netaji.
Its editor Sheetla Singh visited Netaji’s associate Pabitra Mohan Roy in Kolkata in November 1985.
Roy said, “We have visited every sadhu and mysterious individual in search of Netaji, from Saulmari to Kohima in Punjab. Similarly, we also visited Babaji in Basti, Faizabad and Ayodhya. But I can say for sure that he was not Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.”
Despite denials from sources – official or otherwise – his ‘devotees’ refused to accept that Gumnami Baba was not Netaji.
Although the Uttar Pradesh government has officially rejected the claim that Gumnami Baba was actually Bose in disguise, his followers still refuse to accept the claim.
Gumnami ‘believers’ had moved the court in 2010 and got a verdict in favor of their plea with the high court directing the UP government to establish the identity of Gumnami Baba.
Accordingly, the government set up a commission of inquiry on June 28, 2016, headed by Justice Vishnu Sahai.
The report said that Gumnami baba was a “supporter of Netaji”, but not Netaji.
