Lal Bahadur Shastri's Death is well recognized as a Political Murder. I am piecing together a few bits to give readers a better idea as to how the whole murder went down...
The fatal poisoning of a prime minister, a cover-up at the highest levels, stoic silence when questions were asked, conspiracy theories involving international players and national figures, mysterious accidents that claimed the lives of witnesses who could have shed more light on the matter, parliamentary inquiries that have vanished from the library.
This is not a plot from a Robert Ludlum thriller or a film sequel to Bourne Identity, but a real chapter from Indian history that has been buried and forgotten.
As we pieced together the strange circumstances of Shastris death through family accounts and on the basis of RTI applications, we can only conclude that the mystery deepens and some answers must be found. What is also significant is that in spite of RTI applications, the PMO has refused to declassify information about the former PMs death in Tashkent 46 years ago. Anuj Dhar, moderator of a transparency website, had filed an RTI application in 2009 seeking the correspondence between the Indian embassy in Moscow and the external affairs ministry and between the two countries after the premiers death. Shastri had gone to Tashkent for a summit with then Pakistan president Ayub Khan after the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war. He died hours after signing the joint declaration. His family has always maintained that he was poisoned and his death hushed up.
There are certainly unanswered questions. For instance, press reports of the incident show that the authorities in Tashkent immediately arrested a Russian cook. He was released after five hours of questioning. However, in spite of the initial suspicion of poisoning, no post-mortem was done, either in Russia or in India. His late wife kept trying to raise questions about his death, but nothing was ever investigated. The couple had six children, of whom only two, Anil and Sunil Shastri, survive. Both are members of the Congress, although the latter had joined the BJP briefly. Grandson Siddhartha Nath Singh (son of Shastris late daughter Suman) is in the BJP. But regardless of political affiliations, there is a unanimity within the family that Shastri was poisoned and the case was never investigated.
Adding grist to the rumour mill is the extraordinary secrecy over the case. For instance, various RTI applications over the years have sought information both on what documentation is available on the matter and if the government could kindly declassify it.
In 2009, the PMO had replied that it had only one document relating to Shastris death but refused to declassify it under a clause that would prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of the country, the security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the state, relation with foreign state or lead to incitement of an offence. (MMS deep love for US
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Both the facts are strange. First, it defies logic that there can be only one document relating to the death of a prime minister in a foreign country. The correspondence between the MEA and the Indian embassy in Moscow too remains classified. Under ordinary circumstances, there should have been several reports from the embassy on the incident. They should have included an assessment by the Indian ambassador, T.N. Kaul at that time. Surely these should be ordinary routine documents, not dark secrets of state.
There is a fascinating story he recounts, something that was an obsession with his late mother who was the last family member to speak to Shastri. She was on the phone with her father, as her husband, V.N. Singh, an employee of the State Trading Corporation, was travelling to Cairo on work where Shastri too was headed. Shastri therefore told his daughter to ensure that her husband carried Indian newspapers to Cairo. His last words to her were
Im going to have a glass of milk and sleep. The line got disconnected and Suman tried again. However, when she got through 15 minutes later, she was told her father was dead.
Now from a separate source ........
The most vivid account is The Critical Years by veteran Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar. He was part of the prime minister's travelling press corps to Tashkent.
Mr Nayar writes that the Indian prime minister was already a heart patient, having suffered two attacks. He had had a hectic day, holding talks with the Russian premier, Alexey Kosygin - the Russians having brokered the pact - and his officials and had had very little sleep.
"That evening," writes Mr Nayar, "I met by chance his personal physican Dr RN Chugh, who accompanied him. I asked him how Shastri was standing the strain. He looked up to the sky and said: 'Everything is in the hands of God'." Mr Nayar does not elaborate.
Mr Nayar then proceeds to describe the fateful night in Agatha Christie-like detail. Since he was to travel in the prime minister's airplane early next morning to Kabul en route to Delhi, he retired to bed early an hour before midnight. "I must have been dozing when someone knocked at my door and said: 'Your prime minister is dying.' A Russian lady was waking up all the journalists," writes Mr Nayar.
A group of journalists then sped to Mr Shastri's dacha from the hotel. On arriving, Mr Nayar found a grief-stricken Mr Kosygin standing on the verandah. "He could not speak and only lifted his hands to indicate Shastri was no more."
When Mr Nayar went in, he found Dr Chugh being questioned by a group of Soviet doctors through an interpreter. In the next room Mr Shastri lay still on his bed. The journalists emptied the flower vases in the room and spread them on the prime minister's body.
Mr Nayar also noticed an overturned thermos flask on a dressing table some 10 feet away from Mr Shastri's bed and wondered whether the prime minister had struggled to get to open it to get water. "His slippers were neatly placed near the bed; it meant that he walked barefoot up to the dressing table in the carpeted room," Mr Nayar writes.
Mr Nayar then pieces together the events leading up to Mr Shastri's death - of how the prime minister reached the dacha around 10 pm after a reception, chatted with his personal staff and asked his cook Ram Nath to bring him food "which was prepared in the dacha by the Russians". It gets more interesting from here. "In the kitchen there was a Soviet cook helped by two ladies - both from the Russian intelligence department - and they tasted everything, including water, before it was served to Mr Shastri," Mr Nayar writes. Remember this was at the height of the Cold War and India-Pakistan hostilities and the security paranoia was extreme.
As Mr Shastri tucked into a frugal spinach and potato curry meal, he received a call from a personal assistant in Delhi and sought the reaction to the Tashkent agreement back home. Then he spoke to his family in Delhi. He asked his eldest daughter, Kusum, about how she had found the peace pact. "She replied, 'we have not liked it'," writes Mr Nayar. "He asked 'what about her mother?' She too had not liked the declaration, was the reply given." A crestfallen Mr Shastri, according to Mr Nayar, then remarked: "If my own family has not liked it, what will the outsiders say?"
This upset Mr Shastri. "He began pacing up and down the room... For one who had had two heart attacks earlier, the telephone conversation and the walking must have been a strain," he writes.
Then his staff gave him milk and some water in the flask. Around 1.30 am, his personal assistant Sahai, according to Mr Nayar, saw Mr Shastri at his door, asking with difficulty, "Where is the doctor?"
The staff woke up Dr Chugh, while the prime minister's staff, assisted by Indian security men, helped Mr Shastri walk back to his room. "If it was a heart attack - myocardiac infarction, and obstruction of blood supply to the heart muscles, as the Soviet doctors said later - this walk," writes Mr Nayar, "must have been fatal."
Mr Nayar writes - presumably from an
eyewitness account by the personal assistant - that Mr Shastri began coughing "rockingly", touched his chest and became unconscious. Dr Chugh arrived soon after, felt the prime minister's pulse, gave an injection into the heart, tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but to no avail. More doctors arrived. They found Mr Shastri dead. The time of the death was 1.32 am.
Talk about foul play began as soon as the body arrived in Delhi. Mr Nayar says the prime minister's wife asked him why Mr Shastri's body had turned blue. He told her that when "bodies are embalmed" they turn blue. Mrs Shastri was not convinced. She asked about "certain cuts" on Mr Shastri's body. Mr Nayar told her he hadn't seen any.
PS: My bet is that the poison was in the flask which had the milk.
