The Delhi High Court has scheduled a plea by the grandson of former railways minister L N Mishra for May 16, seeking a fair re-investigation into his killing in a blast at Bihar’s Samastipur Railway Station over 48 years ago.
A bench of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait and Justice Manoj Jain listed Vaibhav Mishra’s application alongside an appeal by the convicts against their conviction and imposition of a life sentence for the murder.
The grandson approached the high court following the Supreme Court’s October 13 ruling last year, permitting him to assist in the final hearing of the convicts’ appeal.
The veteran Congress leader and senior cabinet minister sustained fatal injuries in grenade blasts at Samastipur during the inauguration of a broad gauge line on January 2, 1975. He was transferred for treatment from Samastipur to Danapur, where he succumbed to injuries on January 3, 1975. Vaibhav Mishra had approached the apex court challenging a high court order rejecting his plea for a direction to the CBI to conduct a “fair investigation” and “re-investigation” in the matter. Alleging that the probe was botched up, Mishra had sought a fresh probe on several grounds, including that the real culprits were discharged, leading to a “travesty of justice.”
Three ‘Ananda Margis’- Santoshanand, Sudevanand, and Gopalji- and advocate Ranjan Dwivedi were sentenced to life imprisonment in December 2014 by a trial court in Delhi for the killing of the former railway minister and two others.
The trial court concluded that the terror act aimed to pressure the then Indira Gandhi government to release the group’s jailed chief.
The convicts filed an appeal before the high court in 2015, contesting the trial court’s verdict which convicted and sentenced them. They were granted bail, and the appeal remains pending in the high court.
The trial court also ordered the Bihar government to compensate Rs 5 lakh each to the legal heirs of Mishra and two other victims who perished in the blast on January 2, 1975, just a few months before the proclamation of Emergency.
It determined that the conspiracy to eliminate the targets was formulated in a meeting in 1973 at a village in Bihar’s Bhagalpur district, attended by six ‘Ananda Margis’.
Accused Ram Nagina Prasad and Ram Rup were acquitted by the court in January 1981, while Arteshanand Avadhoot passed away in 2004 during the pendency of the case.
Two others, Visheshwaranand and Vikram, received pardon after they became approvers.
The Supreme Court directed the transfer of the case from Bihar to Delhi.
