Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the target of four assassination plots hatched between 1948 and 1955. Sardar Patel, Nehru's ministerial colleague spoke about in Parliament.

As the country pays tribute to him on 130th birth anniversary, Jawaharlal Nehru continues to have bearing on Indian socio-economic policies. As the first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru was very popular in and outside India. However, despite his popularity, Jawaharlal Nehru was faced serious threat to his life.

In the aftermath of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, threat to Nehru's life was real and underscored by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the deputy prime minister and the Union home minister of the time.

In April 1950, Patel was quoted by his daughter and secretary Maniben to have said, "Jawaharlal [Patel used to Nehru with his first name] is exerting night and day for Muslim rights. I lie awake at night worrying that what happened to Gandhiji might happen to him."

FIRST ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE NEHRU FOILED

This assessment by Patel had come two years after the first plot to assassinate Nehru was unearthed in Bihar. It was in July 1948 that Bihar police arrested three men from Lakhisaarai on the basis of a tip-off from the fourth member of the alleged gang.

The tip-off claimed that the three men were on their way to Delhi with a plot to kill Nehru and Patel. Newspapers of the time reported this incident widely. Police was quoted as saying that firearms including pistols and rifles, and country-made bombs had already been arranged for the hit-men in Delhi.

WHEN PATEL SPOKE IN PARLIAMENT

Two years later, and four months after Maniben recorded Patel's concern about threat to Nehru's life, he made shocking revelation in Parliament in August. Patel informed Parliament that Nehru was "intended to be the next target of that group of people who were responsible for the murder of Mahatma Gandhi"

In his speech, Patel named one LP Bhopatkar, who was former president of All India (Hindu) Mahasabha, to have "confessed to a plot to kill" Nehru in 1950 during riots in Eastern Pakistan, now Bangladesh. The speech was widely reported in Indian and international media.

PLOT TO TARGET NEHRU'S TRAIN

Third plot to assassinate Nehru was foiled in 1953 when he was on his way to Bombay, now Mumbai. It was an accidental discovery by a police constable on a railway track near Kalyan, where he found two persons working on the railway lines and suspected foul play.



The Amritsar Express, by which Nehru was travelling, was only ten minutes from the spot. He challenged the two men and then fired at them. Two conical objects were recovered from the tracks.

Police said these were bombs meant to target the train Nehru was travelling by. The news was prominently reported in the international press also. Some reports, however, said the conical objects were not powerful explosives. But police said it was an assassination plot.

KNIFE ATTACK

The fourth such incident was recorded in 1955 during Nehru's visit to Nagpur. Nehru's private secretary MO Mathai wrote about the incident in his book, My Days with Nehru.

It was a knife attack attempted by a rickshaw-puller whom Mathai described as some sort of a political thinker who was annoyed with the Congress and wanted to remove the root-cause of the Congress majority.

The attacker was overpowered by the police and military secretary of Nehru, who played down the incident saying, "I would have myself taken it" while calling the attacker "a cranky man". National press had reported it widely prompting Nehru to issue a statement saying not to "exaggerate" the attack.