Was Lal Bahadur Shashtri planning to meet Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose in Russia?

New Delhi: Decades after the demise of former prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, his son Sunil Shastri, first time on an Indian television, has revealed what Shastriji told him over phone 40 minutes prior to his death.

In the ‘Offbeat’ show on Zee 24 Ghanta, Sunil Shastri told that Shastriji spoke to him about a man he was going to meet during his Russia tour which would have become a 'big news in India'.

In the year 1963, the then prime minister of India Lal Bahadur Shastri passed away few hours after signing the historic Tashkent Pact in Russia. After half-a-century has passed, Shastriji’s death is still shrouded in mystery.

Sunil further said that Shastriji had called up his family only 40 minutes before he passed away. "Shastriji told over the phone that he was going to meet someone special on his Russia tour," he added.

Notably, who is this special person Shastriji was supposed to meet? Who was the person about whom he was referring to? Was he Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose? The suspicion only grows stronger because before departing for Tashkent, Shastriji wanted to form a new commission to look into Netaji's mysterious disappearance. He told this to the brother of Netaji, Amiya Sen, when he came to unveil a statue of Netaji at Red Road.

First his wish to set-up a commission, then the guarded phone call from Russia - are the incidents anyhow related? Lot of historians feel that the events of disappearance of Netaji and the death of Shastriji are entwined with each other intrinsically. Even after 68 years of India's Independence, the mystry behind these events is still to be unraveled.