New Delhi, October 29
Former Union Minister H.K.L. Bhagat, the Delhi Congress strongman during the ’80s and one of those indicted by the Nanavati Commission in the anti-Sikh riots, died in a city hospital today after prolonged illness.
Eighty-four-year old Bhagat, a close associate of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, who called the shots in the faction-ridden Delhi Congress in the late ’70s and ’80s, was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and various ailments for quite some time and was in hospital for one-and-a-half years.
In coma for some time till the end came, he is survived by wife Asha and three children.
Despite
his acquittal in three cases relating to the 1984 riots, he could never get over the stigma following serious allegations that he had led mobs in the aftermath
of Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984. Born in Montgomery in Pakistan on April four, 1921, the Congress leader migrated to Delhi in 1947 and began taking active interest in the politics of the capital city.
