Mughalsarai, 11 February 1968: the president of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh boarded a night train to Patna and never arrived. A trial and a judicial commission later gave their answers. Not everyone accepted them
In the early hours of 11 February 1968, railway staff at Mughalsarai station, near Varanasi, found a body beside the tracks, close to an electric traction pole, some distance beyond the end of the platform.
In his fist, the dead man was holding a five-rupee note.
It was Deendayal Upadhyaya. He was fifty-one, and two months earlier he had been elected president of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh.
In his fist, the dead man was holding a five-rupee note.
The journey
What is documented about his last journey is simple.
On the evening of 10 February, Upadhyaya left Lucknow for Patna by the Sealdah Express. He had a berth in a first-class compartment. The last time anyone saw him alive was at Jaunpur, shortly after midnight.
The train left Varanasi at about 1.40 in the morning, stopped briefly at Kashi, and reached Mughalsarai at about 2.10. Upadhyaya was not on it. About ten minutes later his body was found near a traction pole, 748 feet from the end of the platform where the train had stopped.
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The man with the bedding
A passenger in the neighbouring cabin of the same coach, M.P. Singh, gave the crucial evidence. At Mughalsarai, he said, he had seen a man enter Upadhyaya’s cabin and walk off with a file and a roll of bedding.
The case was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
The CBI concluded that this was an ordinary crime. According to its findings, Upadhyaya had been pushed out of the train by thieves just before it reached Mughalsarai, after he caught them stealing his belongings. It charged two men, Bharat Lal and Ram Awadh, with murder and theft. M.P. Singh identified Bharat Lal in court as the man he had seen with the bedding.
The verdict
The trial did not end the way the CBI had argued.
Both men were acquitted of murder. Bharat Lal was convicted only of stealing the dead man’s belongings, and appealed to the Allahabad High Court. In his judgment, the sessions judge in Varanasi wrote that since murder had not been proved against the accused, “the problem of truth about the murder still remains.”
The judge wrote that, since murder had not been proved, the question of what really happened still remained.
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The commission
More than seventy Members of Parliament, from different parties, then demanded a judicial inquiry. The government agreed, and appointed Justice Y.V. Chandrachud, then a judge of the Bombay High Court and later Chief Justice of India.
Chandrachud examined the evidence and reached a clear conclusion. Upadhyaya, he found, had been standing near the door of the carriage and was pushed out of the running train, and died on hitting the traction pole. He found no political angle. It was, in his view, an ordinary crime. He was also critical of some of the evidence that had been put forward to suggest a conspiracy.
The questions
The Commission’s findings did not settle the matter for Upadhyaya’s colleagues.
Leaders of the Jana Sangh never accepted the theory of petty theft. Nanaji Deshmukh, one of his closest associates, argued that neither the CBI nor the Commission had explained who killed him or why. L.K. Advani later wrote that the Chandrachud report, which found no political angle, had satisfied no one. The questions they raised have been repeated ever since: why was he standing by the door in the middle of the night? Why was he holding a five-rupee note? If the two accused were acquitted of murder, who pushed him?
No later investigation has produced a different answer to those questions. Nor has one produced evidence of a conspiracy. The official record still rests where Chandrachud left it.
The station
In 2018, Mughalsarai Junction, the station near which he died, was renamed Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction.
Trains still pass the place where he was found, just beyond the end of the platform. The five-rupee note in his hand has become the symbol of everything about that night that the record could not explain. The court could not say who killed him. The Commission said it was theft. And more than fifty years later, the questions his colleagues asked are still being asked, while the official answer has never been changed.
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If you think you have remembered everything about this topic take this QUIZ
Results
#1. . On which train was Deendayal Upadhyaya traveling on the night he disappeared?
#2. What was the name of the political philosophy developed by Deendayal Upadhyaya that remains the foundation of the BJP?
#3. What was the official, though widely disputed, cause of death initially provided by the authorities?
#4. Which city was Upadhyaya’s intended destination on his final journey from Patna?
#5. What specific detail found at the scene made the “accidental fall” theory difficult for many to believe?
#6. In which year was the Mughal Sarai railway station officially renamed to Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction?
#7. Which concept of Upadhyaya’s emphasizes lifting the last and most marginalized person in society?
#8. What was Upadhyaya’s political role at the time of his death in February 1968? A) Prime Minister of India
How did Deendayal Upadhyaya die?
His body was found beside the railway tracks near Mughal Sarai station in Uttar Pradesh on the morning of 11 February 1968 CE. He had been travelling on the Sealdah Express from Patna to Lucknow. The official explanation was an accidental fall from the moving train but this explanation was immediately contested by the nature of his injuries, the disappearance of his valuables, and the inadequacy of the investigation that followed.
Was Deendayal Upadhyaya murdered?
This question has never been definitively answered. Multiple inquiries over the decades since his death have produced contradictory findings. His missing valuables and disputed injuries point toward the possibility of robbery and violence. Political motivations have also been suggested. No one has ever been charged or convicted in connection with his death and the case remains officially unsolved.
Why was the investigation into his death considered inadequate?
The initial police investigation was criticised for moving too quickly toward an accidental death conclusion without properly testing other possibilities. Key witnesses were not fully pursued, evidence from the scene was not comprehensively examined and preserved, and the political context of a Congress-led government investigating the death of an opposition party leader created a conflict of interest that further undermined public confidence in the investigation.
How is Deendayal Upadhyaya remembered today?
Deendayal Upadhyaya is honoured as a founding philosophical father of the Bharatiya Janata Party. His portrait hangs in the Central Hall of the Indian Parliament. Mughal Sarai Junction, near where his body was found, was renamed Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction in 2018 CE. His birth anniversary, 25 September, is observed as Antyodaya Divas. Numerous government programmes, institutions, and public spaces across India bear his name.
Sources & References
The Wire, “How RSS Efforts to Prove Deen Dayal Upadhyaya’s Murder Was ‘Political’ Came Undone” (25 September 2017) — the train timings, the discovery of the body, M.P. Singh’s evidence, the trial and its outcome, and the Chandrachud Commission.
ThePrint, “Who killed Deendayal Upadhyaya? It’s a 50-year-old question” (25 September 2020) — the CBI’s conclusion and Nanaji Deshmukh’s objections.
Newslaundry, “The legacy and the enduring mystery of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya’s death” (30 September 2015) — the arrests and the acquittals on the murder charge.
Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Death of Deendayal Upadhyaya (Justice Y. V. Chandrachud, 1970) — the Commission’s findings.
