A VETERAN politician from India’s governing Congress party died on Tuesday (June 11) of multiple shotgun wounds he suffered in a Maoist ambush last month, officials said.
Vidya Charan Shukla, 84, was flown to a hospital near the national capital after the May 25 attack by several hundred Maoist guerrillas on a Congress motorcade in the insurgency-stricken state of Chhattisgarh.
Twenty-three people including local Congress leaders were massacred in the ambush in the forested Sukma area, 345km from the state capital Raipur.
Among those killed were Chhattisgarh state Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel, his son Dinesh and former state home minister Mahendra Karma, who had set up a controversial anti-Maoist militia group in 2005.
Shukla won a parliamentary seat in general elections in 1957 as a Congress candidate. Voters returned him to parliament eight more times.
Shukla, who was from a prominent political family, held a string of portfolios including foreign, home, defence and finance in various Congress party governments.
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Congress party president Sonia Gandhi paid condolences to Shukla’s family.
