New Delhi: Two sons of India’s former prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri have demanded declassification of documents relating to his mysterious death.

Shastri had died apparently from a heart attack in his hotel room on January 11, 1966 in the then Soviet Union city of Tashkent after inking a Soviet-mediated peace treaty between India and Pakistan.

The two south Asian neighbours had fought a war in August-September the previous year,

“I personally feel there could have been foul play. Can’t say so conclusively, but the negligence is clear, everyone went scot free, no one was punished,” the former prime minister’s son said on Friday, adding that blue marks and white spots were found on Shastri’s dead body.

Anil Shastri is a senior leader of India’s erstwhile ruling Congress party. His son Adarsh Shastri is an Aam Aadmi Party lawmaker in the Delhi assembly.

“When my father’s body came to the Delhi airport, the Palam airport as it was called then, and when it was taken out of the aircraft, that came as a shock because his body had turned blue. His face had turned blue and there were white spots on the temple... The moment my mother saw the body, she straightaway came to the conclusion that it was not a natural death.

Shastri’s other son Sunil Shastri, who is a member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) backed suspicions raised by his brother and said he had requested several former prime ministers including Chandra Shekhar, Inder Kumar Gujral and Manmohan Singh to declassify files related to their father’s death without any positive response from them.

The demand to declassify documents related to Shastri’s death have gained ground following the West Bengal government’s recent decision to declassify 64 files relating to the mysterious death of noted freedom fighter Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose on September 18. Pressure has mounted on the federal government to declassify the files it has in possession related to Bose’s alleged death in 1945 in a plane crash.

Noted journalist Kuldip Nayar, who served as media adviser to Shastri, has also backed those seeking declassification of files relating to Shastri’s death.

Nayar expressed surprise that no post-mortem was conducted after Shastri’s death.

Nayar was among the first persons to enter Shastri’s room. He recalls that while Shastri’s slippers were properly placed on the carpet, a thermos flask on the dressing table had been overturned.

Shastri’s sons had in July demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi clear the mystery over their father’s death. They had raised similar questions even then saying that the entire family was flown to Tashkent in a special plane provided by the then Soviet Union leader Alexi Kosygin and were flabbergasted to find that Shastri was put up in a hotel 15 km away from the city with no telephone or bell in his room to seek any assistance in case of emergency.

Talking to a private news channel, Anil Shastri on Friday raised some more questions to underline the family’s suspicion of foul play in Shastri’s death.

“There was a butler [Chand Mohammad] who was arrested and released. My mother wanted to meet him when she went to Tashkent but she was told he could not be traced,” Anil Shastri said.

Anil Shastri also wondered how both his father’s personal physician R.N. Chug and his personal assistant Jagan Nath Sahai met with accidents and died under mysterious circumstances just before they were to depose before a commission of inquiry. “Coincidence twice is a little improbable.”

He also raised questions about his father’s missing personal diary. “His personal diary never came back. He jotted down notes daily in it. It could have mentions of Tashkent agreement [signed a day before Shastri’s death]. Even the thermos next to him was never brought back. His death could have been from something in the thermos flask,” Anil Shastri, a former member of parliament from the Varanasi constituency of Uttar Pradesh, now represented by Prime Minister Modi, said.