In Independent India, Shahnawaz Khan joined the Congress party after dissolution of the I.N.A. and was invited by Jawaharlal Nehru to join his cabinet for Railways and transport , steel and mines , petroleum and chemical , labour and employment , Agriculture ; chairman of National Seeds Corporation Ltd ,concurrently was the Chairman, Food Corporation of india . He has an adopted daughter who happens to be Shah Rukh Khan's mother, but she has no blood relationship .
Shahnawaz Committee : In 1956, the government constituted a committee to look into the circumstances around Subhash Chandra Bose's death. Major General, Shah Nawaz Khan, headed the committee, whose members included Suresh Chandra Bose. The Committee began its work in April 1956 and concluded four months later when all three members of the Committee signed a paper that stated that Netaji indeed died in the aeroplane crash at Taihoku (Japanese for Taipei) in Formosa (now Taiwan), on August 18, 1945.
The Mitsubishi Ki-21 twin-engine heavy bomber that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Col Habibur Rahman boarded at Saigon airport around 2 PM on 17 August 1945. I
Lt. Colonel Shahnawaz Khan, son of Capt Sardar Tikka Khan of Matore, born in the village of Matore, Kahuta, Rawalpindi District, British India, (now Pakistan) studied at the Prince of Wales Royal Indian Military College, Dehradun and was commissioned as an officer in the British Indian Army. Khan initially volunteered to join the British Indian Army in 1940, in the opening stages of the war in Asia. He saw action in the Battle of Singapore before being taken prisoner after the surrender of the city.
He was captured during the Second World War by the Japanese and interned in Singapore. Subhash Chandra Bose encouraged him to join the Indian National Army, to fight the British Empire. Although initially reluctant to join the INA under Mohan Singh, Shah Nawaz Khan joined the second INA after the arrival of Subhash Chandra Bose in South-East Asia. He later led the INA forces that participated in the Japanese offensive at Imphal and Kohima, and subsequently rose to be the commander of the second division. Khan also saw action against allied forces in the latter's second Burma Campaign, and surrendered to British troops in Burma.
In 1946, after the war, Lt. Col. Shahnawaz Khan, Colonel Habib ur Rahman ,Colonel Prem Sehgal and Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon were put to trial at the Red Fort in Delhi for "waging war against the King Emperor", i.e. the British sovereign. The three defendants were defended by Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Bhulabhai Desai and others based on the defence that they should be treated as prisoners of war as they were not paid mercenaries but bona fide soldiers of a legal government, the Provisional Government of Free India, or the Arzi Hukumate Azad Hind .