50 years on, BJP's Ashwini Choubey moves Delhi HC for fresh probe into Congress minister Lalit Narayan Mishra's killing

More than 50 years after the death of the former Railway minister Lalit Narayan Mishra, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politician Ashwini Kumar Choubey has approached the Delhi High Court seeking a fresh court-monitored investigation into Mishra’s murder. 

Choubey has claimed that wrong people have been convicted for Mishra’s murder and that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) did not conduct a thorough probe into the assassination. 

Lalit Narayan Mishra was one of the most senior Congress leaders at the time. He was killed in Bihar’s Samastipur on January 2, 1975, by grenade blasts while inaugurating a railway project. 

A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe found the members of socio-spiritual organisation Ananda Marga responsible for the killing and four persons belonging to the group -- Santoshanand, Sudevanand, Gopalji and Ranjan Dwivedi – were convicted in the case in 2014 by a Delhi court, nearly four decades after the assassination. 

Choubey has now moved an intervention application in the appeals filed by the convicts. He has argued that Mishra’s death was a result of “a larger political controversy to get rid of a powerful leader of the masses who may have eventually been a challenge to the then government” led by Indira Gandhi. 

The application came up for hearing on Monday before a Division Bench of Justices Vivek Chaudhari and Manoj Jain, which questioned Choubey’s reasons for approaching the Court after five decades. 

It warned that if the BJP leader fails to make out a case, he will face “exemplary costs”. 

“If we dismiss it, it will be at an exemplary cost. Aap aese thodi na kar sakte hain ki 50 saal baad koi application laga de aur bole isme reinvestigation hona chahiye (You cannot file an application after 50 years and say that there should be reinvestigation),” the Court remarked. 

The Court said it will hear the matter on November 11. 

In his plea, Choubey has claimed that Mishra was about to join the JP movement against the then government, which he was a part of, after meeting Jayaprakash Narayan, but he was killed before that. 

“In fact the Applicant herein [Choubey] clearly remembers that almost all leaders of the Central Government during the JP Andolan/Movement had criticized the movement except Late Sh Lalit Narayan Mishra who belongs to Bihar and was then Railways Minister,” Choubey said in his application. 

He referred to a Bihar CID report of October 1978, jurist VM Tarkunde Report of February 1979 and the investigation done by The Indian Express newspaper in 1978 to argue that the CBI turned the trajectory of the investigation to blame the Anand Margi members. 

Notably, the CID report cited by Choubey says the CBI had blamed the Anand Margis for Mishra’s death to protect the people close to the seat of power in Delhi. 

The Express investigation was based on Tarkunde’s report, which pointed fingers at Ram Bilas Jha, a former member of the Bihar Legislative Council and said that the CBI probe was "deliberately abandoned, indeed sabotaged, probably at the instance of Mrs Indira Gandhi."