An Irish World War-II historian has claimed to have come across classified British documents that suggest Britain ordered the assassination of Netaji Subash Chandra Bose in 1941.

Eunan O'Halpin, a professor at the Trinity College, Dublin, said he came across classified documents of Britain's Special Operations Executive in archives in Turkey.

Speaking at a weekend seminar in Kolkata, O'Halpin said the documents contained the order from London [Images] to SOE's Turkish and Egyptian units to "liquidate" Netaji.

The assassination was ordered on March 7, 1941 when the British authorities thought that Netaji was on his way to Germany [Images] through Iran, Iraq and Turkey after fleeing house arrest in Kolkata in January the same year.

British agents gathered this information by tapping Italian wire transmissions.

But Netaji eventually reached Germany through Russia [Images] on April 2, giving the slip to the British agents.

These new documents have been handed to the Netaji Research Bureau in Kolkata.

O'Halpin said the assassination order proved how much trouble Netaji meant for the British colonial rulers.