Former Union minister and Congress veteran Vidya Charan Shukla on Tuesday succumbed to his injuries, sustained in a Naxal attack on a convoy of party leaders in Chhattisgarh on March 25.
Shukla, who had been airlifted from Raipur to a specialty hospital in Gurgaon, died of multiple organ failure in the afternoon. The 84-year-old leader is survived by his wife and three daughters.
Unlike other Congress leaders from Chhattisgarh killed in the same ambush laid by the Left extremists, Shukla had a more checkered history in politics.
From being the Information and Broadcasting Minister who cracked down on the Press, imprisoned several senior journalists, banned films critical of the Emergency excesses, he became a turncoat the moment Indira Gandhi was voted out in 1977. It did not take Shukla much time to dissociate himself from Sanjay Gandhi, once his mother was out of power.