Netaji’s cap missing from Red Fort museum, alleges grandnephew
Times of India | 13 March 2026
Kolkata: Days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Kolkata, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's grandnephew, Chandra Kumar Bose, alleged on X that Netaji's cap, which he had handed over to the PM, has gone missing from the Netaji Museum at the Red Fort. According to Bose, the issue came to light on March 10 when advocate Naveen Bamal visited the museum and found the cap missing. He further alleged on Thursday evening that officials were unable to explain its whereabouts and urged the Prime Minister to intervene.
Netaji's personal cap, which he had given to Chandra Bose's father Amiya Nath Bose, remained in his possession as a "family heirloom". Bose told TOI that the cap was handed over to the Prime Minister at a function held inside the Red Fort on Jan 23, 2019, to mark Netaji's birth anniversary. "Members of my family, our friend Suparno Satpathy and many others from The Open Platform for Netaji (OPN) had handed over Netaji's cap to the Prime Minister," he said.
He added the Prime Minister had then placed the cap "inside a glass box right at the entrance of the Red Fort Museum" in the presence of him and other members of the Bose family. Bose further mentioned that the cap was later brought to Kolkata in 2022 for display at the temporary museum set up inside the Victoria Memorial during Netaji's 125th birth anniversary commemorations, where the Prime Minister was also present.
However, he claimed that although the cap was subsequently taken back to Delhi, it "never was placed at its original place at the Red Fort". The matter, Bose said, came to light on March 8 when Naveen Bamal, advocate of the Supreme Court and a member of OPN, visited the Red Fort museum and found the cap missing from the display box. Calling it "a matter of national importance", Bose urged the Centre and the PMO to clarify "the exact position" regarding the cap's whereabouts. "The cap was placed by the PM right at the entrance to the museum in a glass box. How can it go missing and the staff be so callous about sharing information about its current whereabouts?" Bose asked.
Bamel told TOI that he was personally present on the day when this cap was presented to the PM. "Day before yesterday, I went to the Red Fort Museum with my friend Vikrant Jakhar, who is a research scholar at the Delhi University. The first thing we noticed was that Netaji's cap was not there. When I asked the guards posted there, they told me that it might have been transferred to some other exhibition elsewhere," Bamel said.