VC Shukla, Congress leader injured in Chhattisgarh Naxal attack, dies in hospital

Gurgaon: Senior Congress leader and former Union Minister Vidya Charan Shukla, who was injured in a Maoist attack in Chhattisgarh last month, died of multiple organ failure in a Gurgaon hospital today. He had been on ventilator support for two weeks.

Mr Shukla, 84, was shot thrice during the Maoist ambush of a convoy of cars carrying top Congress leaders of the state back from a rally in Chhattisgarh's Bastar district on May 25.

He was found by a local journalist in a pool of blood, sitting propped against his vehicle and was airlifted first to Raipur, where the bullets were removed, and then to Delhi in a critical condition. Chhattisgarh Congress leaders Mahindra Karma and Nand Kumar Patel were among 24 people killed in the attack.

Doctors at the Medanta Hospital in Gurgaon had said it was a miracle that Mr Shukla had survived for those many hours.

Today the hospital said in a statement that Mr Shukla had gun shot injuries in his abdomen, chest and thigh. Surgeries were performed on multiple organs, the hospital said, and added that the Congress leader was on "vital organ support." He died at 2.30 this afternoon.

Advertisement

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who had visited Mr Shukla in hospital, has condoled his death.

Mr Shukla belonged to an old Congress family and was one of the famous Shukla brothers of undivided Madhya Pradesh. His father, Ravi Shankar Shukla, was the first Chief Minister of reorganised Madhya Pradesh.

Advertisement

He was only 28 when he won his first Lok Sabha election. He went on to be elected to the Lok Sabha nine times. Mr Shukla first became a minister in 1966, when he was 37 years old, in then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's cabinet. In a long career, he held many important portfolios.