After Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s mysterious disappearance, the doubts over the death of the former Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, are gaining traction as his family on Saturday demanded that the classified files on the matter be made public.
Shastri, the second Prime Minister of post-colonial India, died on January 11, 1966, just a few hours after signing a peace deal with Pakistan in Tashkent, then in the Soviet Union. The Indian government closed the case by saying Mr. Shastri suffered a heart attack, but 50 years later his son Anil Shastri contested the claim.
Speaking to The Hindu , Mr. Anil Shastri said his father’s face turned blue and there were white spots on the forehead. “Since then, the doubts have been lingering.” Five months later, when the former Soviet statesman, Alexei Kosygin, invited the family to visit the villa where Shastri had breathed his last, Mr. Anil Shastri picked holes in the protocol Indian prime ministers are entitled to.
