Sugata Bose, grand-nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, has said the Victoria Memorial Hall has overnight changed the captions and credit of the displays at Nirbhik Subhas, an exhibition on Netaji, that he had said were “fake” in a letter on Saturday.

The display showing the resignation letter by Subhas Chandra Bose from the Indian Civil Service was called “fake” by Sugata Bose as “the handwriting was not that of Netaji and had several anomalies including spelling mistakes and wrong salutations”.

Netaji’s resignation letter from ICS on display on Sunday after corrections, including the spelling mistake

On Sunday, the display had no spelling mistakes, the salutation was changed and the credit to the display reads: “This is the original letter published in the book A Pictorial Biography NRB (Netaji Research Bureau). Above is the artistic recreation of the original document for bettervisibility.”

Sugata Bose said on Sunday: “They have obviously drastically changed their display today in response to my letter. Netaji’s own handwriting is perfectly legible and could be read easily from a distance if enlarged. Netaji A Pictorial Biography was edited by my father and published by Ananda Publishers in 1979. It is clear the organisers simply made copies of many photos and documents from that book. The copyright of the book is with Netaji Research Bureau as most photos are from the NRB archives.”

Numerous phone calls to the curator and secretary of the Memorial, Jayanta Sengupta, through the day went unanswered. He had said in a WhatsApp message on Saturday that he was away attending a medical emergency.

The letter on display on January 29

Union culture secretary Raghavendra Singh, who was present at the inauguration of Nirbhik Subhas and showed Prime Minister Narendra Modi around the exhibition on January 23, did not respond to calls and messages from Metro.

Nirupama Kotru, joint secretary in the culture ministry, said the curator of the Memorial would respond to Bose’s letter. But Sugata Bose has not received any response so far.

A Delhi-based agency, Design Factory India, has designed the exhibition. When contacted by this newspaper, Siddharth Bathla, the founder and director of the agency, said: “We just design and manufacture stuff.”

Sugata Bose said: “People from Design Factory India had visited the Netaji museum at Netaji Bhavan and took photographs with their cell phones, I was told.”

The exhibition had remained closed for a few hours on January 29. After it reopened, Sugata Bose had extensive photographs taken of the displays and sent the letter to the Memorial.

He wrote in his letter: “I understand you closed your exhibition Nirbhik Subhas for a day to include acknowledgements to Netaji Research Bureau. While it appears that the originals of many photographs and facsimiles of letters and documents exhibited by you are indeed from the archives of Netaji Research Bureau collected with dedicated effort over more than six decades, Victoria Memorial never contacted NRB to seek help with your exhibition. I am puzzled therefore about the basis on which you have given acknowledgements.”