11 October, 2009: When Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri died suddenly in Tashkent in 1966, it must have thrown the Indian Embassy in Moscow in a tizzy. A shocked Ambassador T N Kaul, who was to later become Foreign Secretary, would have scrambled to inform Delhi of the tragedy. The ministers and mandarins in Delhi would certainly have lost sleep over the development. A flurry of telephone calls and the telegrams over the tragic development would have ensued for sure. read more

13 September 2009: The Ministry of External Affairs this year declassified 121 files of 1950s and 1960s vintage but there is no way you can access them. This is because the files are not there in the National Archives of India, but still lying in the Records Management Section of the MEA's office on the Raisena Hill. read more

12 September 2009: Research and Analysis Wing has turned down an RTI request seeking details of declassification, if any, undertaken by India's foreign intelligence agency. "The information sought for is of classified nature and has security implications. The same cannot be provided in the interests of national security," says a letter from an Additional Secretary from the Cabinet Secretariat to Chandrachur Ghose of Endthesecrecy.com read more

5 September, 2009: Locked up somewhere in the Ministry of Home Affairs' North Block office are the records of Mukherjee Commission which probed the death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. The records comprise the ones created by the commission, headed by former Supreme Court judge M K Mukherjee, and those submitted by the government to the panel. Now, after a 33-month long tug of war, many of these records, which formed the basis of the commission's historic finding that the freedom fighter's death in an air crash was actually a ploy, will be shared with EndTheSecrecy. read more

28 August, 2009: The Prime Minister's Office is holding 28,685 classified files and not one of them have been declassified this year. This startling piece of information has been revealed by the nation's top office under the Right to Information. Incredibly, the manual that governs the declassification process in the office is it self classified.read more

19 August, 2009. The final word from the PMO is in. The office won’t declassify their record on the mysterious death of former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. Vini Mahajan, Joint Secretary to PM, has “disposed off” our appeal against the office to deny us the record with a polite but brief turndown. read more

4 August, 2009. The Ministry of Defence has not declassified any record in last few years. This startling admission has been made by the History Division of the Ministry in a response to our RTI query, which asked them to detail "year-wise number of documents declassified during the past five years". read more

"The requisite information pertaining to New Delhi District may please be treated as Nil" reads the letter from Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (New Delhi). What it means is that the Delhi Police doesn't have any information related to the death of former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966. This confirms, in particular, that no post-mortem was performed on Shastri's body in India as well. The MEA has already stated that there was no post-mortem in the USSR. read more

The Government of India seems to have a knack for fermenting unwarranted mysteries. Nearly forty-five years after Lal Bahadur Shastri passed away in the erstwhile USSR, the Prime Minister's Office has refused to declassify a report throwing light on how its former boss died. If that's not enough, the Ministry of External Affairs office on the Raisina Hill has no record sent by the Soviets offering details about the circumstances leading to the controversial death of a most eminent guest. read more

Counter-intelligence failure or what?

This is it. The Ministry of Home Affairs and the Prime Minister's Office have conveyed to the Ministry of External Affairs that they don't have any information concerning the 1971 CIA spy case, brining about a near closure to the matter so far as they are concerned. The PMO had earlier stated on these lines only. The latest response from the MEA comes in compliance of the CIC order following a complaint filed by me. read more

American record talks about CIA agents; Indian don't

Days after the Central Information Commission received by complain about the Ministry of External Affairs not complying with their order, the Ministry has sent me a reply in response to the CIC order. And guess what it implies? That a declassified US State Department record cited by me is full of fabrications. read more