Accusing opportunists of exploiting Netaji's popularity to peddle bogus tales about his "disappearance" in 1945 and his "non-existent afterlife post-1945," Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's grandnephew and noted historian Sugata Bose said this has pained many in the Bose family immensely.

"There is no doubt that he was killed in air crash," Bose, Gardiner Chair at Harvard University and former MP, told PTI.