Former Union Minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey of the BJP on May 27 demanded that the Centre set up a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the murder of senior Congress leader Lalit Narayan Mishra who was killed in a bomb blast in Samastipur in January 1975. Mishra who was the Railway Minister in the Indira Gandhi Cabinet was the elder brother of three-time Bihar CM Jagannath Mishra and was one of the most influential Congress leaders from Bihar at the time.
Choubey’s demand coincided with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two-day Bihar visit on May 29 and 30. Asked why he raised the demand five decades after Mishra’s murder, Choubey said, “If the 1984 riots case could be looked at afresh, why cannot there be a fresh probe in the L N Mishra case? After all, he was one of the most popular leaders from Bihar. Such was the rage among the public after his murder that the Congress had to install his younger brother, Dr Jagannath Mishra, as the Bihar CM.”
Who was L N Mishra and how was he killed?
A three-time Lok Sabha MP and two-term member of the Rajya Sabha, Mishra was one of the most senior Congress leaders from Bihar. He started his political career under PM Jawaharlal Nehru and went on to serve in various positions, such as the junior minister for labour, unemployment, and planning; MoS Home Affairs; and MoS Finance. On February 5, 1973, he was appointed the Railways Minister. At one point, he was considered one of the top five ministers in the Indira Gandhi Cabinet.
On January 2, 1975, Mishra arrived at the Samastipur railway station to throw open a broad-gauge railway line from Samastipur to Muzaffarpur. As he was about to step down from the dais after finishing his speech, grenades were thrown towards the stage. Mishra died of his wounds the following day. Along with him, MLC Surya Narayan Jha and railway clerk Ram Kishore Prasad were also killed.
What was the result of the probes?
A case was registered at the local railway police station the same day, and on January 10, the CBI took over the case. The agency initially arrested four men in connection with the killing: Arun Kumar Thakur, Arun Kumar Mishra, Shivlal Sharma, and Umakant Jha. The agency pinned the blame on the Ananda Marga sect, whose followers are known as Anandamargis, and in the aftermath of the killing, Ananda Marga was banned for two years.
However, Mishra’s grandson and Supreme Court lawyer Vaibhav Mishra believes the Anandamargis had nothing to do with the murder. “The CBI had been unclear in its investigation right from the beginning. After four initial arrests, it arrested some more members of the Anandmargi group in July-August 1975. In November 1975, the murder charges against Arun Kumar Mishra and Arun Kumar Thakur were dropped,” he told The Indian Express.
On August 30, 1978, then Bihar CM Karpoori Thakur wrote to Morarji Desai, the PM at the time, saying that his administration had ordered a separate and secret inquiry into the killing. Then DIG of the Criminal Investigation Department of Bihar Police, Shashi Bhushan Sahai, submitted the report to the CM. The following year, on February 15, Justice (retired) V M Tarkunde also submitted a report on the murder case to the CM. Both reports pointed towards a deep-rooted conspiracy behind the murder, according to Vaibhav Mishra.
In 1979, journalist Arun Shourie, then the editor of The Indian Express, published a book on the case titled “Who killed L N Mishra? An Indian Express Investigation”. The case was, meanwhile, transferred from Bihar to Delhi.
Was anyone convicted?
After decades, the Supreme Court on August 15, 2012, directed the trial court to expedite the hearings and dispose of the case. On December 14, 2014, accused Santoshanand Avdhut, Sudevanand Avdhut, Ranjan Dwivedi, and Gopalji were awarded life imprisonment. All of them were Anandamargis. In total, 213 witnesses were examined, including 163 by the prosecution and 43 by the accused. The appeal the convicts filed in the Delhi High Court is still pending.
For the past few years, Vaibhav Mishra has been pushing for the CBI to reopen its investigation into the case. After not receiving any response from the agency, he approached the Delhi High Court in July 2021, urging it to direct the CBI to consider his representation. After the High Court directed the CBI to respond to Mishra, the agency wrote back saying a reinvestigation was not legally permissible since the appeal against the conviction was pending in the High Court.
After he sought permission to assist the prosecution in the case, the High Court granted his appeal on March 21, 2022, and he handed over the material he had collected to the CBI. The lawyer again moved the High Court on January 21, 2023, seeking that the CBI be asked to conduct a “fair probe” into the case. He moved the Supreme Court on October 13, 2023, and the top court granted Mishra the liberty to assist the Delhi High Court “at the time of final hearing of the criminal appeals filed by the convicts, in accordance with law”. The matter continues to remain listed for final hearing.
“The Tarkunde and Sahai reports clearly stated how attempts were made to sabotage the case. Shourie’s book lists the circumstances leading up to the assassination and the people involved in the conspiracy. The book also lists, in a specific and definitive manner, the people who benefitted from the assassination,” said Mishra, adding that a committee of medical experts had raised questions about why his grandfather was taken to a faraway place for treatment.
