The nefarious plot to assassinate Lalit Narayan Mishra unfolded in a secret meeting in 1973 at a village in Bhagalpur district where six Ananda Margas hatched a conspiracy in which the then Railway Minister was dubbed as target number two followed by the then Bihar CM Abdul Gaffoor.
This was revealed in the 1090-page verdict passed by a Delhi court in the 1975 L N Mishra murder case in which four convicts were awarded life imprisonment.
The court noted that the meeting at house of Ananda Marga Aacharya Ram Kumar Singh was attended by two of the convicts Santoshanand and Sudevanand and others in which Madhavanand, who had turned approver in a murder case allegedly involving their cult leader Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, who was in jail that time, was declared as the enemy number one.
District judge Vinod Goel, in its verdict, noted that the secret meeting was an outcome of purported messages allegedly sent by Sarkar from jail to his followers "to prove their bravery by bringing him out of jail and not to rest until they kill their enemies".
Referring to the probe by CBI, the court noted that Santoshanand had given the responsibilities to Arteshanand and Sudevanand to kill Mishra while Vinayanand was given task to eliminate Madhavanand. Gaffoor was to be killed by another co-conspirator Visheshwaranand.
"All the conspirators, considered the then Bihar chief minister Abdul Gaffoor as a puppet of (L N) Mishra and therefore he came within the purview of an enemy," it said.
"To achieve the object of conspiracy, Visheshwaranand and Vinayanand adopted pseudonyms of 'Vijay' and 'Jagdish' respectively and to disguise their identity, they also discarded their saffron robes, cut their hair, and shaved their beard," it said in its verdict.
Highlighting the conspiracy hatched, the court said that accused Ram Aasrey Prasad, who was later declared a proclaimed offender, obtained five bombs whereas Santoshanand procured arms and ammunitions and handed it over to one of the four convicts Gopalji.
