On Lal Bahadur Shastri's 114th birthday, new book raises questions; was PM Shastri killed?

'Ram Nath gave Shastri milk, which he used to drink before retiring at night. The PM once again began pacing up and down and later asked for water, which Ram Nath gave from a thermos flask on the dressing table. Ram Nath offered to sleep on the floor, but Shastri told him to go to his room upstairs. The assistants were packing luggage at 1:20 am when they suddenly saw Shastri at the door. With great difficulty he asked 'where is doctor sahib?'' that's what Kuldip Nayar note, the veteran journalist who himself India lost this August. He was there that night in Tashkent in 1966. Minutes later, Shastri would be dead. A glass of milk and some water the last things he consumed. Pakistan's 1st military dictator Ayub Khan, would then be spotted carrying Shastri's coffin as it was returned to India. It was Pakistan’s ill conceived operation gibraltar that had brought them there. Ayub had misjudged the PM who had just taken over after Nehru's death. The Pakistanis were hoping that their second infiltration attempt would break India from Kashmir and the softspoken Shastri wouldn't risk a full fledged war. And Kashmiris would revolt. He was wrong on both counts. The Kashmiris did not revolt and Shastri allowed the Indian army to engage on an open front. And Pakistan got hammered. It's that what brought them both to Tashkent, only one would return alive. Shastri, a veteran congressman, had been only PM for 2 years. On the return of his embalmed body, his wife Lalita was deeply suspicious. The body had cuts, wounds and was hard, bloated and dark blue. The official version was a heart attack. She suspected poisoning. No post mortem was every done. No one knows why. And these 52 years later, like strangely many things in a free country with the right to information, all the files surrounding what happened in Tashkent are still classified. Now a researcher who made his name digging into the fate of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose has written a new book, it's called your Prime Minister is dead. He's put together world renowned forensic pathologists who have raised several intriguing questions. Was it a Pakistani plot? Perhaps even a Russian one? What explains the signs of poisoning of Shastri's body? Why was no post mortem done? Why are the files still classified? Crucial questions that affect the history of India. Shastri cannot be a man we've forgotten about. Especially since Oct 2 is a birth anniversary he shares with Gandhi.