Bollywood Director Vivek Agnihotri has announced that his movie ‘The Tashkent Files’ based on the mysterious death of second Prime Minister of India, Lal Bahadur Shastri is going to release just before the 2019 elections. This certainly is not going to go down well with the Congress party as neither the filmmaker nor the subject is of particular fondness for the Grand Old party or its supporters in the media.
The Congress party and its supporters have already raised many hues and cry over the fact that ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’ is set to hit the theatres before the 2019 elections. It is one of the most awaited movies and is based on the book written by Sanjaya Baru, media advisor and chief spokesperson of the former PM Manmohan Singh, from 2004 to 2008. Trailer of the movie was released a few days back. The book portrays how former PM Manmohan Singh was sidelined by Rahul and Sonia Gandhi. The trailer has caused much consternation in the Congress ecosystem.
Earlier, in an exclusive interview with MyNation, the director Vivek Agnihotri said “The Tashkent Files’ is a “murder mystery” based on Anuj Dhar’s book ‘Your Prime Minister is Dead’ and seeks to unravel the mysterious circumstances of Shashtri ji’s death. He further added that the movie will change the political narrative of the nation. The movie is already in the last stage of the post-production and we will release it in February or March next year, Agnihotri added.
‘Tashkent Files’ directed by Vivek Agnihotri will come with a marvellous star cast including Mithun Chakravorty, Pankaj Tripathi, Pallavi Joshi and non-other than the man with many colours Naseeruddin Shah.
Taking further about movie ‘Tashkent Files’, Vivek Agnihotri said, “It has been 50 years and everybody has been demanding, from people to tall political leaders such as Vajpayee and George Fernandes that the mystery should be dealt with. Immediately, after Shastri died people started demanding a post-mortem. It was not done. The family officially requested then acting PM Gulzarilal Nanda, but nothing was done. The family requested Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, again to no avail”.
Since the incident took place, eminent personalities and organizations had asked the Congress governments over the year to make the files related to Shastri’s death public but no response came. When a journalist asked Mr. Agnihotri about this, he said, “It has been raised in Parliament so many times. While in this country no one gets to know the truth, I decided to file a lot of RTIs to look into the matter. Every RTI said there is no information. We are the largest democracy and our second PM dies immediately after a war and we don’t have any information and no documents. How strange!”
MyNation team also interviewed Anuj Dhar, the writer of the book, who emphasized on the fact that there was an elaborated cover-up in both India and outside. “The death of Shastri got mired in controversy right from the time his body arrived in Delhi, hours after his demise in Tashkent early morning on January 11, 1966. Right at the airport, there was an attempt to prevent his family members from taking a look at the body,” he added.
Anuj Dhar also said, “Shastri’s wife Lalita noted, the body had taken a dark blue hue, even though the PM had been dead barely for a few hours. There were some white patches on the face”. “Certain cut marks were noted in the stomach area and on the back of the neck. An official explanation, coming after four inexplicably long years, had it that the cut in the stomach was made for introducing the embalming fluid in the body. That there was an incision on the neck was flatly denied. But the family members and others clearly saw this cut mark and there was no reason why they should be disbelieved,” Dhar added.
The ignorance of the then Congress government can be observed by this statement of Dhar, in which he mentioned, “We approached the leadership with the request that the body be sent for post-mortem. We were told not to make such a request as this would adversely affect international relations.”
Vivek Agnihotri has also alleged a cover-up in the investigation of Shastri’s death. He said, “I don’t care about the Congress. The movie is as honest and truthful and frank and hard-hitting as I am. This will change the political narrative about Indian politics. It will tell us whether this democracy is about the right to truth or not. In Congress’s regime, no truths were unveiled. They started the culture of cover-ups”. It clearly evident that Vivek is firm about unveiling the truth through the ‘Tashkent Files’ and it may come up as another setback for the Grand Old party as ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’ is all set to expose it.