NEW DELHI – Five decades after the sudden death of the Indian PM LalBahadur Shastri in former USSR, speculations have been raised that he mighthave been mysteriously killed by Indian military establishment for signingIndo Pak war pact.
The Central Information Commission has directed the Prime Minister’s Officeand the ministries of external affairs and home to make public the recordsof the Raj Narain committee, constituted in 1977 to look into themysterious death of the then prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966,PTI has reported.
The committee was reportedly constituted by the Janata Party government tolook into the circumstances surrounding the death of Shastri on January 11,1966 in Tashkent, hours after signing a declaration with Pakistan PresidentMuhammad Ayub Khan post-1965 Indo-Pak war. The records related to thecommittee are reportedly untraceable, the commission noted. InformationCommissioner Sridhar Acharyulu also directed the PMO, the MEA and the MHAto publish the statement of categories of documents regarding the death ofthe second prime minister of the country that are available with them.”Thepublic authorities referred above have a constitutional duty to inform andthe people have legitimate expectation to know the truth behind the deathof their beloved leader. More so, it is the primary responsibility of thePMO to inform the people what happened to late Lal Bahadur Shastri, whoonce was its head,” he said.
Acharyulu’s directive came on an RTI application seeking to know from theHome Ministry whether Shastri’s body was brought to India for cremation orhe was cremated in the then USSR and copy of the post-mortem. Shastri diedin Tashkent where he had gone for talks with the Pakistan Presidentmoderated by Soviet premier Premier Alexei Kosygin. Although he reportedlydied from a massive heart attack, questions were raised on thecircumstances of his death on foreign soil when cold war was at its peak.The conspiracy theories were further fuelled after the central governmentstarted denying documents, under the RTI Act, related to his death callingthem secret and disclosure prejudicial to the interests of the country.
The CIC in 2011 while hearing a separate case had directed disclosure of 11pages related to the death of Shastri but allowed withholding one documentof the External Affairs Ministry which had reference to ‘Mukti Bahini’. TheHome Ministry had transferred the present application of Navdeep Gupta tothe National Archives of India (NAI).
During the hearing, the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO)representing the NAI told the commission that the information may be withMEA, Indian Embassy in Russia, MHA or some other authority.”The CPIO statedthat except information of some news clippings they do not have anyauthentic document on Late PM’s death or post-mortem,” Acharyulu noted.While researching on the subject, Acharyulu found an article which hadclaimed an inquiry committee under Raj Narain was formed by erstwhileJanata Party government in 1977. It was also reported that two crucialwitnesses — the personal physician of Shastri R N Chugh and his personalservant Ram Nath –died in road accidents when they were coming to deposebefore the committee. The article had claimed that the records related tothe committee were not available even in the Parliament library.
Taking note, Acharyulu asked the PMO, MHA and MEA to look for the recordsrelated to the committee. He recommended the Parliament Secretariat tosearch in their library whether any records regarding the inquiry committeecould be retrieved and if they are traced, they should be transferred tothe NAI. “The Commission considers that these offices (PMO, MHA and MEA)especially that of MHA require to make a fresh effort to trace the detailsabout Raj Narain inquiry report or related documents and tell the nationwhat was inquired and found,” Acharyulu said.
He also directed the PMO, MEA and MHA to disclose records, including 11pages related to the death held by Cabinet Secretariat which were earlierordered to be disclosed by the CIC, pertaining to the issue.Acharyulu saidthat if any of these public authorities feel that some records may besecret and confidential attracting exemption clause of Section 8(1)(a) ofthe RTI Act, they must produce it in a sealed cover before it to adjudicatewhether assumptions are correct or not. “This RTI request is an effort of acitizen to know information regarding the ‘truth’ behind the death of LalBahadur Shastri that cannot be brushed aside,” he noted.