'Post-mortem would have ended speculation on Lal Bahadur Shastri's death (Book Review)

New Delhi, Aug 12 Lal Bahadur Shastri was "killed twice. First, in Tashkent and then, by us when we deleted him from our minds" by ignoring the circumstances of his death, says a new book on the death of Indias second Prime Minister.

Shastri was killed on January 11, 1966, hours after signing a peace agreement with Pakistan in the wake of the 1965 Indo-Pak war, the book says a post-mortem would have cleared the air over his demise, which remains a mystery more than five decades after his passing.

"We killed Shastri by being lazy, by being ignorant, by being indifferent. By not finding out the truth. By not asserting our right to truth. We killed Shastri. I have said whatever I had heard, read, learnt, felt and understood. I may be absolutely wrong. It's just an interpretation. But, if you think that in a democracy, a citizen's first fundamental right is the right to truth then, now, you find out what is the truth," writes award-winning filmmaker, bestselling author and free thinker Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri in "Who Killed Shastri?"

( With inputs from IANS )