Lal Bahadur Shastri Mystery of Shastri's Death

Although officially it was maintained that Shastri died of heart attack, his widow, Lalita Shastri kept alleging that her husband was poisoned. Many believed that Shastri's body turning blue was an evidence of his poisoning. Indeed a Russian butler attending to him was arrested on suspicion of poisoning Shastri, but was later absolved of charges.^[21]

In 2009, when Anuj Dhar, author of CIA's Eye on South Asia, asked the Prime Minister's Office under an RTI plea (Right to Information Act), that Shastri's cause of death be made public, the PMO refused to oblige, citing that this could lead to harming of foreign relations, cause disruption in the country and cause breach of parliamentary privileges.^[21]

The PMO did inform however that it had in its possession one document related to Shastri's death, but refused to declassify it. The government also admitted that no postmortem examination had been conducted on him in USSR, but it did have a report of a medical investigation conducted by Shastri's personal physician Dr. R.N. Chugh and some Russian doctors. Furthermore PMO revealed that there was no record of any destruction or loss of documents in the PMO having a bearing on Shastri's death. As of July 2009, the home ministry is yet to respond to queries whether India conducted a postmortem and if the government had investigated allegations of foul play.^[21]

Circumstances of Shastri's death do indeed make a case for close enquiry. On the night of January 11, Shastri was awakened by a severe coughing fit. Dr. R.N. Chugh came to his aid. Shastri was unable to speak and pointed to a flask kept nearby. A staffer brought some water which Shastri sipped. Shortly afterwards, Shastri became unconscious and attempts to revive him proved futile.

A cold case forensic enquiry which keeps these facts in consideration, could point to three causes - in order of probability.

(i) Myocardial Infarction (ordinarily known as Heart Attack)

(ii) Café Coronary (impaction of food in windpipe - in this case, drops of water)

(iii) Poisoning by some very quick acting poison, say cyanide although its probability is minimal.