New Delhi, July 22 (IANS) Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Siddharth Nath Singh and Madan Lal Khurana Wednesday sought an appointment with President Pratibha Patil to submit a memorandum demanding that the cause of late prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s death be made public.
Khurana said he had close family relations with Shastri during his days in Allahabad and he feels sorry that his death continues to be a mystery four decades on.

“The family members of Shastri-ji have been denied information on the ground that if information demanded under RTI (Right To Information Act) by his family members connected with his death is made public, then foreign relations may be damaged and there may be disturbances in the country,” he added.

Shastri died on January 11, 1966, in Tashkent in Uzbekistan (then part of the Soviet Union) under mysterious circumstances.

Said Siddharth Nath Singh, Shastri’s grandson: “It is very regrettable that the riddle connected with the death of my grandfather, who was then prime minister, has not been resolved and made public.”

Singh said he was very disappointed with the reply from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) under the RTI Act.

“People of the country are anxious to know about the real cause of the death of the then prime minister and hence I will go to meet the president along with Madan Lal Khurana, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and other prominent persons and also submit a memorandum demanding to highlight the facts regarding his death,” he added.

BJP vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said: “He was not an ordinary person but the prime minister of the country. The cause of his death should now be made public.”