On the 84th anniversary of the execution of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru in Lahore, we reproduce our Editorial from the issue dated March 24, 1931
The news of the execution of Bhagat Singh and his two
comrades, accused in what is known as the Lahore Conspiracy Case, will
come upon the public as a rude shock. For, although the petition for
mercy made on their behalf had been rejected by the Viceroy,
applications had been made before the High Court with a view to get a
judicial pronouncement on the legality of the Local Government’s
attempts to carry out the sentence on the prisoners in spite of the fact
that the Court which, in the opinion of Counsel for the prisoners, was
the only one competent to issue the death warrant, had ceased to exist.
The issue raised by Counsel was obviously so complicated and the
arrangements made on behalf of the prisoners to get the verdict of the
highest tribunal available so advanced that the public felt that for
some time at any rate...the execution could not come off and...there was
still hope of the prisoners being saved from the extreme penalty of the
law. That the Government had every need to proceed with caution will be
evident if one recalls the extraordinary circumstances connected with
the trial of the accused.
The accused were put up for
trial before a Special Magistrate twenty months ago for the offence of
conspiracy to wage war against the King by murder, dacoity, manufacture
and use of bombs and other methods and, so far as Bhagat Singh was
concerned, of having murdered a police officer, Mr. Saunders of Lahore.
Subsequently, on the ground that the police ill-treated them, the
accused refused to appear in Court... the Lahore High Court... refused
to be a party to dispensing with the committed proceedings ...the case
was withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts, placed
before a special tribunal and provision was made for the trial of the
accused in their absence. In spite of these extraordinary arrangements,
the accused attended the court of the special tribunal for a few days,
but following an incident the police handcuffed them and indulged in a
lathi charge in the court premises — proceedings which moved one of the
judges of the tribunal openly to express his disgust at the police
action.
The accused thereafter refused to attend the
court and the trial was proceeded with in their absence. The trial went
on in their absence without any counsel representing them; without any
cross examination of the approvers and without testing the evidence of
other witnesses. Nor should it be forgotten that two of the seven
approvers subsequently retracted their earlier story. To carry out a
sentence of death passed as the result of a trial in such extraordinary
circumstances will have been in any case to incur a very grave
responsibility. But in this case the additional point had been raised
that there was legally no authority competent to give effect to the
sentence... By the indecent haste with which they have proceeded in the
matter they have defied public opinion and exasperated it in a manner
that it is difficult to envisage the gravity of the reactions in this
country to their latest blunder. As Gandhiji says, the Government “have
lost a golden opportunity of winning over the revolutionary party. It as
their clear duty, in view of the settlement, at least to suspend
indefinitely the execution. By their action they have put a severe
strain upon the settlement and once more proved their capacity for
flouting public opinion”.
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