The day Indian freedom fighter Bhagat Singh was hanged: A first-person account

This weekend will be observed as Shaheed Diwas or Martyr’s Day to commemorate the death anniversary of India’s bravest. In March 1931, Bhagat Singh, along with Rajguru and Sukhdev, was hanged by the colonial government during the British Raj. A nation mourned and yet, was never more determined in its fight for freedom. The sacrifices of the three revolutionaries laid the bulwark for the struggle for India’s independence that culminated on August 15, 1947.

Despite nearing a century since the hangings, Bhagat Singh remains like the silverware on the mantelpiece, relevant as the ideological symbol that gives strength against oppression even in contemporary India. Not many people had the fortune to come in close contact with the legendary freedom fighter. My grandfather Virendra, also a revolutionary, was, however, one of them. Excerpted below from the book Pratap, A Defiant Newspaper, is his account from March 23, 1931.

‘The day Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev were hanged it was my fortune or misfortune to be in the same jail,’ says Virendra, in his historic first-person account.

In front of where we were lodged, there was an open ground. The jail authorities had started collecting wood there. We thought that after the hanging the three would be cremated here. We tried to enquire from whichever jail official we could meet but received no satisfactory reply. No official was ready to open his mouth on this issue but there was an unusual bustle in the jail.

Outside the prison gates, Lahore was ill at ease and hardly noticed that it was spring. The hearts of its citizens were frozen with the certainty that doom was impending. A dust storm the night before had settled down as though it too was bowing to the inevitable. All that was left was for the family members of the three men to say their goodbyes and they were expected to come shortly to meet their sons – for one last time.

Virendra writes:

Newspapers on 23 March reported that relatives of the three revolutionaries had been informed that the hanging would take place the next day, 24 March so [they] could have their last meeting on 23 [March]. As per prison rules, the time of hanging was 7am in the summer and 8am in the winter months. Additionally, as per jail rules on the day of a hanging, other prisoners were to be kept locked up in their cells till the body was taken out of the jail compound.

Virendra and his fellow prisoners had no reason to believe otherwise. But an unassuming jail employee, Barkat the barber, was to shake him and other inmates out of their mournful stupor.

So, we thought that the hanging would be on the morning of 24 [March]. But on 23 March, at about 2pm, the prison barber came running to us with tears in his eyes, and in a quivering voice said, ‘Sab kuch khatam ho gaya [Everything is over]. The Sardar is saying that they would probably be hanged today itself. He has conveyed Vande Mataram to the two of you.’

On hearing Barkat’s words Virendra and Ehsan Ilahi were distraught. They had accepted the hanging with drooping shoulders, but were not willing to see the intrepid revolutionaries die any sooner than they had to. Thoughts raced through their minds questioning the insidious move by the British to bring forward the execution by a day. With passions running high in the city, the British had quietly advanced the hangings by 12 hours. Bringing his emotions under control, Virendra requested Barkat to go back to Bhagat Singh and ask him for a keepsake that the two young men could treasure as a remembrance. Half an hour later, the barber returned – in his hands were a black fountain pen and a comb. ‘On the comb, Bhagat Singh had carved his name with a blunt instrument. Ehsan Ilahi kept the pen and I, the comb.’

Time was moving and, yet, it felt like it had stood still. It was late afternoon and police officers were camping outside the gates of the Lahore Central Jail.

Every evening at 7pm, chief warder Chattar Singh would lock us up, after securing all other prisoners. That day, he came at 4pm. When we asked him why he had come three hours early, he became emotional and could not speak. After several minutes, he composed himself and said the end had come; the three would be hanged that evening at 7pm, there was nothing that could be done to save them now. The warder left after locking the prisoners in, ‘we sat on our cots, totally silent’.

Virendra and Ehsan Ilahi were accompanied by another undertrial, who was tasked to help them. They told him not to cook anything that day. Anguished, the men could only wait. The silence – theirs and of the other inmates – swept through every corner of the sprawling Lahore Central Jail. The three who were to be hanged were kept in ward number 14. There was a furlong between that ward and where we were. Thus, we could not gather immediately what was happening but lodged next to number 14 were [the] accused in the second Lahore Conspiracy Case and they had a clearer picture.

Just before 7pm, Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar were brought out and taken towards the phansi ghar (execution room). As they walked, they loudly shouted, ‘Inquilab Zindabad!’ (Long live the revolution).

Hearing it, the other accused in the conspiracy case responded with equal gusto. Soon, the entire jail was reverberating with loud cries of ‘Inquilab Zindabad’. We too joined them. It spread even to the non-political prisoners, who started shouting the same slogan and it echoed across the jail. Then, there was deadly silence. That night, no one ate in the Central Jail of Lahore. And no one slept.

- Excerpted with permission from Pratap: A Defiant Newspaper, Chander Mohan and Jyotsna Mohan, HarperCollins India.