September 25th marks the 105th birth anniversary of Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya. The erstwhile president of Bharatiya Jana Sangh was found dead on February 11, 1968. This body was discovered on the tracks near the Mughalsarai Junction. It has been 53-years since. Still, to this date, there are no answers to who killed the man who was fondly addressed as Panditji. The mysterious death of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay still intrigues the nation.
It was in the morning of February 11, 1968, when a dead body covered with a sheet was discovered on the railway tracks at Mughalsarai station, which the BJP-led government at the centre renamed as Deen Dayal Upadhyaya railway station in the year 2018. The body was lying flat on its back on the railway tracks. There was a 5 rupee note in the deceased’s fist. On his wrist was a watch by the name of Nana Deshmukh. There were only 26 rupees in the pocket and there was a first-class ticket with the number 04348 on it.
The body was found near the electric pole by one Ishwar Dayal, a leverman at the station. Dayal informed the Assistant Station Master that about 150 yards from the station, towards the south of the railway line, a dead body was lying near the electric pole No.1276. This body was later identified as the Bharatiya Jana Sangh President Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay, who was on his way to Patna from Lucknow.
It’s disturbing that there is still no concrete evidence about the circumstances which led to the death of the sole engineer of the philosophy of Integral Humanism. According to reports, the CBI has then concluded that the murder was an ordinary crime. According to the CBI report, two petty thieves had murdered Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay and their motive was theft. On June 9, 1969, a special sessions court gave its verdict on the basis of this CBI report. It created a stir after it stated that “the real truth still has to be found”.
The furore sparked by the judge’s statement compelled the Indira Gandhi government to constitute an inquiry commission.
The commission, appointed on 23 October 1969, concluded that Upadhyaya was murdered under mysterious circumstances.
Many people have since then felt that Panditji’s death was a politically motivated killing and the urge to reopen the case has resurfaced time and time again.
Accidental death, or a pre-planned murder?
According to the little information available in the public space, Pandit Upadhyaya was at the house of his sister Lata Khanna in Lucknow a day before he was murdered. On that day, Panditji had to hurriedly board the Lucknow-Sealdah Express, since he had to head to Patna where a Jan Sangh meeting was scheduled to take place in view of the budget session.
Half of the bogey in which he was travelling in was part of the third class and the other half was first class. In Railway parlance, it was an FCT bogie. Panditji managed to get a first-class ticket. The Deputy Chief Minister of the state Ram Prakash Gupta himself had gone to drop him at the station.
The Pathankot-Sealdah Express reached Lucknow at around 7 pm.
Upadhyaya’s berth had been in coupe A, but he exchanged his birth with Gauri Shanker Rai, a member of the legislative council who had his birth in coupe B. MP Singh, a government officer, was the other passenger in Coupe A.
Those days, the Pathankot Sealdah Express did not go through Patna. At Mughalsarai, some of the train’s bogeys were separated and joined with the Delhi-Howrah Express.
At around 12 ‘O’clock in the night, Upadhayaya met Kanhaiya, an emissary sent by the erstwhile king of Jaunpur. When he saw Maharaj of Jaunpur’s letter addressed to him, Panditji realised he had forgotten his glasses in the previous compartment. He brought his glasses from Coupe A, read the letter and told Kanhaiya he would respond later. This incidence records Deendayal Upadhyaya’s presence at Mughalsarai railway station at 2.15 am.
At 2.50 am, the Delhi-Howrah Express departed Mughalsarai and arrived in Patna the next morning. Here in Patna, preparations were being done to welcome Panditji. Deendayal Upadhyaya, however, did not reach Patna the next morning.
While the members of the Jan Sangh party began searching through the entire train for Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay, they learnt that a dead body has been discovered in the Mughalsarai railway station.
Back in Mughalsarai, doctors had declared him dead by that time. No one at the station knew until then that the body was that of Jana Sangh co-founder Deen Dayal Upadhyaya. Nobody, not even the cops. However, there was a person working at the station named Banmali Bhattacharya who recognised Paditji and later informed the Jana Sangh workers.
Moreover, the police also discovered a ticket beside his body, which allowed them to quickly identify him by matching the ticket number.
Additionally, when the train Panditji was travelling in left Patna and reached the Mokama station at around 9:30 in the morning, a traveller discovered an unclaimed suitcase. The passenger handed it over to the railway staff. Upon investigation, it was discovered that the suitcase belonged to Panditji.
MP Singh, another passenger in Coupe A, confirmed Panditji’s presence in the train to the authorities. Singh told the police that in Mughalsarai when he was walking towards the restroom, he saw a person pulling down Panditji’s bedding from the train. When he inquired, the unknown person told MP Singh that the bed belonged to his father and since he had got down at the Mughalsarai station, he was unloading his luggage including the bed.
Based on the tip, the authorities were able to track down a man named Lalta. On interrogation, Lalata stated that he was approached by one Ram Awadh who had requested him to remove the unclaimed bed from the train. On further inquiry, the police also recovered Panditji’s jacket and kurta from a sweeper.
Several investigations were carried out but no new leads were found. The probe was then handed over to the CBI. When the investigations were being carried out it was learnt that when the train had reached Patna station some unknown person, who himself did not board the train, had given four hundred rupees to a sweeper to clean the coupe.
CBI had even identified Ram Awadh and one Bharat Lal as the accused. But since there was not too much evidence against the duo, the court freed them for the charges. The court concluded that Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay was murdered by two petty thieves. The court sent a youth named Bharat Lal for 4 years imprisonment for theft.
As mentioned above, the case was handed over to a committee constituted by the Congress government, but again nothing conclusive was arrived at. Some even blamed Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Jana Sangh’s next president, but every theory failed and the death of Panditji continued to remain a mystery.
What do analysts and BJP leaders say on the ‘murder’ of Pandit Deen Dayan Upadhyaya?
Here, it becomes imperative to revisit what many analysts and experts have said about the death of Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay in the past.
There are many conspiracy theories about Upadhyaya’s death. Balraj Madhok, one of the founding members of Jan Sangh, has said categorically on many occasions that Upadhyaya’s was a murder, not an accident. In his memoir, he had written about the involvement of certain senior Jan Sangh leaders in the murder. In 1977, the Janata Party government had initiated a fresh inquiry, but it yielded no results.
The BJP had directly blamed Congress for the death of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya. The party believes that the growing popularity of the Jan Sangh leader was a threat to Congress, and was the main reason for his death.
There are some videos on youtube in which many people have directly targeted the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru while talking about Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay.
In a video posted by The Quint, when political analyst Rakesh Sinha had discussed Panditji, he claimed that when he entered politics, Jawaharlal Nehru began targeting the Jana Sangh. He was well aware that this individual would not only alter the political landscape, but also the quality of politics.
In 2015, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy had demanded setting up a multi-disciplinary special investigating team to re-investigate the “conspiracy” behind the mysterious death of Jan Sangh founder Deen Dayal Upadhyaya.
He claimed that Upadhyaya’s close companions, including Nanaji Deshmukh and Dattpant Thengadi, never accepted the CBI’s findings that he was forced out of the train by thieves.
The BJP leader had further argued that if that was the case, how was Panditji’s body lying upright? Why did he have a 5 rupee note in his hand? Saying that every passenger present that day in the train had booked tickets by providing fake addresses, Swamy had claimed that Panditji’s murder was all well planned, which was never investigated properly.
MJ Akbar had also concurred that the mystery behind the death of Panditji remains unsolved.
Mughalsarai Junction renamed as Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya
As a tribute to one of its tallest leaders, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Uttar Pradesh government had renamed the iconic Mughalsarai railway station to Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction in the year 2018. The Uttar Pradesh government had sent a proposal in 2017 regarding renaming the Mughalsarai station and the proposal was approved by the centre on 4th June 2018.
The station is inextricably attached to the history of one of the tallest leaders of Jan Sangh, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, who is an icon for many nationalists even today.
The Yogi Adityanath-led UP government had proposed changing the name of the station in 2017 after it rose to power in the state. Though the Centre had given its in-principle approval in 2017 to the state government’s proposal to rename the station, the move to rename Mughalsarai got a leg-up after UP Governor Ram Naik gave his assent to the proposal in June 2018.
The decision had not sat well with the opposition as the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samajwadi Party had protested against the decision in 2017.
Who is Upadhyay, whose vision was hailed by PM Modi
On, February 11, 2021, on the occasion of Panditji’s 53 death anniversary, PM Narendra Modi had paid tribute to Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, saying the country is realising Panditji’s vision of building a self-reliant India.
“Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Ji‘s thoughts are equally relevant today and will continue to be so. In 1965, during the Indo-Pakistan war, India had to depend on foreign countries for weapons. Deen Dayal Ji had said at that time that we need to build an India that is self-reliant not just in agriculture, but also in defence and weaponry,” PM Modi said.
Deen Dayal Upadhyaya was the second top Jana Sangh leader, the first being the outfit’s founder, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who also died mysteriously on June 23, 1953. Mookerjee too was 52 at the time of his demise.
Politics wasn’t just about gaining power for Upadhyaya. He had insisted on a politics founded on values and principles. Upadhyaya became president of the BJS at the party conclave in Kozhikode in December 1967. However, this arrangement was only temporary. On February 11, 1968, two months after becoming president, Upadhyaya’s body was found the side of the railway track near Mughal Sarai station in Uttar Pradesh. He was only 52 years old. His death created a void in Indian politics that took years to fill.
