Kakori conspiracy

Last updated

The Kakori Train robbery (prapt of Kakori conspiracy) was a train robbery that took place at Kakori, a village near Lucknow, [1] on 9 August 1925, [2] during the Indian independence movement against the British rule in India. It was organized by the Indian revolutionaries of Hindustan Republican Association (HRA).

Contents

Photo of German-made Mauser pistol. Four Mausers were used by the Indian revolutionaries. Mauser C96 prototype 1895Mar15.jpg
Photo of German-made Mauser pistol. Four Mausers were used by the Indian revolutionaries.

The robbery was conceived by Ram Prasad Bismil and Ashfaqullah Khan who were members of HRA, which later became the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. This organisation was established to carry out revolutionary activities against the suppression of British Empire with the objective of achieving independence. Since the organisation needed money for the purchase of weaponry, Bismil and his party made a plan to rob a train on the Saharanpur railway lines. [3] The robbery plan was executed by Bismil, Khan, Rajendra Lahiri, Chandra Shekhar Azad, Sachindra Bakshi, Keshab Chakravarty, Manmathnath Gupta, Mukundi Lal, Murari Lal Gupta and Banwari Lal. [4] [5] One passenger was killed unintentionally.

Robbery

On 9 August 1925, the Number 8 Down Train was travelling from Shahjahanpur to Lucknow. [6] When it passed Kakori, one of the revolutionary, Rajendra Lahiri pulled the emergency chain to stop the train and subsequently, the other revolutionaries overpowered the guard. It is believed that they looted that specific train because it was carrying the money bags (taxes) which belonged to the Indians and was being transferred to the British government treasury. They looted only these bags (which were present in the guards' cabin and contained about ₹ 8000 [lower-alpha 1] ) and escaped to Lucknow. The objectives of this robbery were to:

One lawyer, Ahmad Ali, who was a passenger, had got down to see his wife in the ladies compartment and was killed in an unintentional discharge by Manmathnath Gupta, but this made it a manslaughter case. Following the incident, the British administration started an intense manhunt and arrested several of the revolutionaries who were members or part of the HRA. Their leader, Ram Prasad Bismil was arrested at Shahjahanpur on 26 October 1925 and Ashfaqullah Khan was arrested on 7 December 1926 at Delhi.

Arrests

Forty people [8] were arrested from all over India. Their names (with the place and date of arrest) are:

Arrested later —

Of the above, Sachindranath Sanyal, Rajendra Lahiri, and Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee had already been arrested in Bengal. Lahiri was prosecuted in a Dakshineshwar bombing case, while Ashfaqullah Khan and Sachindranath Bakshi were arrested later when the main Kakori action case was over. A supplementary case was filed against these two and they were prosecuted in the same manner. Chandrashekhar Azad was the only participant to not get arrested.

Kakori convicts in a group photo Kakori convicts in a group photo.webp
Kakori convicts in a group photo

Kakori trial

Bismil and some others were charged with various offences, including robbery and murder. Fourteen people were released due to a lack of evidence. Two of the accused – Ashfaqullah Khan and Sachindranath Bakshi were captured after the trial. Chandrashekhar Azad reorganized the HRA in 1928 and operated it until his death on 27 February 1931.

Charges pressed against further three men were dropped. Damodar Swarup Seth was discharged due to illness, while Veer Bhadra Tiwari and Jyoti Shankar Dixit were suspected of providing information to the authorities. Two other individuals – Banarsi Lal and Indubhushan Mitra came to be approvers in return for a lenient sentence.

Court's proceedings

Charges against 19 of the accused were withdrawn (2 had become approvers while 17 people had been released). The trial against the remaining 21 began on 1 May 1926 at the Special Sessions Court of Justice Archibald Hamilton. Abbas Salim Khan, Banwari Lal Bhargava, Gyan Chatterjee, and Mohammad Ayuf were the assessors of the case. Of the 21 accused, two people namely Sachindranath Biswas and Lala Hargovind were released due to lack of evidence, while Gopi Mohan became an approver.

The court had appointed Jagat Narayan Mulla as public prosecutor knowingly; he had a prejudice against Ram Prasad Bismil since 1916, when Bismil led the grand procession of Bal Gangadhar Tilak at Lucknow. He had also been the public prosecutor in the Mainpuri conspiracy case of 1918.

The government officers had also bribed many of the accused to become approvers. The trials were mainly based on the statements given by Banwari Lal who had met the revolutionaries and was also involved in the planning the robbery activities taken up by the group at Bamrauli (25 December 1924), Bichpuri (9 March 1925) and Dwarikapur (25 May 1925). So, his statement was used as the main evidence to prove the HRA members guilty.

The judgement of the case trials of Sessions Court was pronounced on 6 April 1927 as follows —

Ram Prasad Bismil, Roshan Singh and Rajendra Nath Lahiri were sentenced to death. Sachindranath Sanyal was given life imprisonment. Manmathnath Gupta was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment. Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee, Govind Charan Kar, Raj Kumar Sinha, Ram Krishna Khatri and Mukundi Lal were sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, while Suresh Chandra Bhattacharya and Vishnu Sharan Dublish were given 7 years' imprisonment. Bhupendra Nath Sanyal, Ram Dulare Trivedi, Prem Krishna Khanna and Pranawesh Chatterjee were sentenced to imprisonment for 5 years' and the least punishment (3 years' imprisonment) was given to Ram Nath Pandey and Banwari Lal.

Final verdict

The building which used to house the Chief Court of Oudh. It now serves as the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court. Stamp of India - 2016 - Colnect 606703 - Allahabad High Court.jpeg
The building which used to house the Chief Court of Oudh. It now serves as the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court.

Following the arrest of Ashfaqullah Khan, the police interrogated him to try to gain supplementary evidence against his accomplices but he refused. Another supplementary case was filed against Ashfaqulla Khan and Sachindranath Bakshi in the court of Special Sessions Judge John Reginald William Bennett. An appeal was filed in the then Chief Court of Oudh (now Allahabad High Court – Lucknow Bench) on 18 July 1927. The case trials started the next day. The judgement of the trial was pronounced a month later on 11 August.

The punishments were given as follows:

Hunger strike in the jail

After the court gave the judgement of the main Kakori Action Case on 6 April 1927, a group photograph was taken and all the accused were sent to the different jails of the United Provinces. In the prisons, they were asked to wear jail uniforms like the other prisoners which led to immediate protests and hunger strikes. The revolutionaries argued that since they had been charged with crimes against the British rule (and supposedly overturning the British Raj), they should be treated as political prisoners and thus should possess the rights and amenities provided to political prisoners.

The details of their hunger strike are listed below:

Name of the prisonerName of the JailDays of hunger strike
Ram Prasad Bismil Gorakhpur Central Jail4 days (from 7 April 1927 to 11 April 1927)
Roshan Singh Allahabad Jail6 days (from 7 April 1927 to 13 April 1927)
Ram Nath Pandey Raibareli District Jail11 days (from 7 April 1927 to 18 April 1927)
Prem Krishna Khanna Dehradun District Jail16 days (from 7 April 1927 to 23 April 1927)
Suresh Chandra Bhattacharya Agra Central Jail19 days (from 7 April 1927 to 26 April 1927)
Ram Krishna Khatri Agra Central Jail32 days (from 7 April 1927 to 9 May 1927)
Mukundi Lal Bareilly Central Jail 32 days (from 7 April 1927 t0 9 May 1927)
Raj Kumar Sinha Bareilly Central Jail 38 days (from 7 April 1927 to 15 May 1927)
Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee Fatehgarh Jail41 days (from 7 April 1927 to 18 May 1927)
Ram Dulare Trivedi Fatehgarh Jail41 days (from 7 April 1927 to 18 May 1927)
Govind Charan Kar Fatehgarh Jail41 days (from 7 April 1927 to 18 May 1927)
Manmath Nath Gupta Naini Allahabad Jail45 days (from 7 April 1927 to 22 May 1927)
Vishnu Sharan Dublish Naini Allahabad Jail45 days (from 7 April 1927 to 22 May 1927)

Defense committee

The legal defence for the arrested revolutionaries was provided by Govind Ballabh Pant, Mohan Lal Saxena, Chandra Bhanu Gupta, Ajit Prasad Jain, Gopi Nath Srivastava, R. M. Bahadurji, B. K. Chaudhury and Kripa Shankar Hajela.

Pandit Jagat Narayan Mulla, a leading advocate from Lucknow and uncle-in-law of Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru refused to defend the arrested revolutionaries. He was appointed as public prosecutor by the law of court.

Among the political figures who came out in support of those arrested for the Kakori train robbery were: Motilal Nehru, Madan Mohan Malaviya, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Lala Lajpat Rai, Jawaharlal Nehru, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, Shiv Prasad Gupta, Shri Prakash and Acharya Narendra Dev. [9]

Train

Reaction

There were widespread protests against the court's decision all over the country. Members of the Central Legislature even petitioned the Viceroy of India to commute the death sentences given to the four men to life sentences. Appeals were also sent to the Privy Council. These requests were turned down and the men were finally executed. Appeals were claimed to have been also made by Mahatma Gandhi, despite his lack of executive authority.

Clemency appeal

On 11 August 1927, the Chief Court endorsed the original judgement with an exception of one (7 yrs) punishment from the judgement of 6 April. A mercy appeal was filed in due course before the Provincial Governor of U.P. by the members of the legislative council which was dismissed. Ram Prasad Bismil wrote a letter to Madan Mohan Malaviya on 9 September 1927 from Gorakhpur Jail. Malviya sent a memorandum to the then Viceroy and Governor-General of India Irwin with the signatures of 78 Members of Central Legislature, which was also turned down.

On 16 September 1927, the final mercy appeal was forwarded to Privy Council at London and to the King-Emperor through a famous lawyer of England, Henry S. L. Polak, but the British Government, who had already decided to hang them, sent their final decision to the India office of Viceroy that all the four condemned prisoners were to be hanged till death by 19 December 1927 positively.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ According to one estimate ₹ 4,679, one aana and 6 pai was looted [7]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shahjahanpur</span> City in Uttar Pradesh, India

Shahjahanpur is a municipal corporation, town and district headquarters of Shahjahanpur District in Western Uttar Pradesh, India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chandra Shekhar Azad</span> Indian revolutionary (1906–1931)

Chandra Shekhar Sitaram Tiwari, popularly known as Chandra Shekhar Azad, was an Indian revolutionary who reorganised the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) under its new name of Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) after the death of its founder, Ram Prasad Bismil, and three other prominent party leaders, Roshan Singh, Rajendra Nath Lahiri and Ashfaqulla Khan. He hailed from Bardarka village in Unnao district of United Provinces and his parents were Sitaram Tiwari and Jagrani Devi. He often used the pseudonym "Balraj" while signing pamphlets issued as the commander-in-chief of the HSRA.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ram Prasad Bismil</span> Indian revolutionary, poet & writer (1897-1927)

Ram Prasad Bismil was an Indian poet, writer, and revolutionary who fought against British Raj, participating in the Mainpuri Conspiracy of 1918, and the Kakori Conspiracy of 1925. He composed in Urdu and Hindi under pen names Ram, Agyat and Bismil, becoming widely known under the latter. He was also a translator.

The Revolutionary movement for Indian Independence was part of the Indian independence movement comprising the actions of violent underground revolutionary factions. Groups believing in armed revolution against the ruling British fall into this category, as opposed to the generally peaceful civil disobedience movement spearheaded by Mahatma Gandhi.

Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA), previously known as the Hindustan Republican Army and Hindustan Republican Association (HRA), was a radical left-wing Indian revolutionary organization, founded by Sachindranath Sanyal. After changes in Bhagat Singh's ideology and the influence of the Russian Revolution, they held meetings in Feroz Shah Kotla Maidan and added the word socialist to their name. Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, Sachindra Nath Bakshi, Sachindranath Sanyal and Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee were the leaders of the group at the time. HSRA's manifesto titled The Revolutionary and written constitution were produced as evidence in the Kakori conspiracy case of 1925.

Manmath Nath Gupta was an Indian Marxist revolutionary writer and author of autobiographical, historical and fictional books in Hindi, English and Bengali. He joined the Indian independence movement at the age of 13 and was an active member of the Hindustan Republican Association. He participated in the famous Kakori train robbery in 1925 and was imprisoned for 14 years. On release from jail in 1937, he started writing against the British government. He was sentenced again in 1939 and was released in 1946 just a year before India's independence in 1947. He has written several books on the history of the Indian struggle for independence from a revolutionary's point of view, including They Lived Dangerously – Reminiscences of a Revolutionary. He was also the editor of the Hindi literary magazine Aajkal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ashfaqulla Khan</span> Indian revolutionary (1900–1927)

Ashfaqulla Khan was a freedom fighter in the Indian independence movement against British rule and the co-founder of the Hindustan Republican Association, later to become the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rajendra Lahiri</span> Indian revolutionary (1901–1927)

Rajendra Nath Lahiri, known simply as Rajendra Lahiri, was an Indian revolutionary, who was a mastermind behind the Kakori conspiracy and Dakshineshwar bombing. He was active member of Hindustan Republican Association aimed at ousting the British from India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roshan Singh</span> Indian revolutionary (1892–1927)

Thakur Roshan Singh was an Indian revolutionary, born in the village of Nabada in Shahjahanpur district of United Provinces in a Rajput family, who was sentenced in the Bareilly shooting case during the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1921–22. After release from Bareilly Central Jail, he joined the Hindustan Republican Association in 1924.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sachindra Bakshi</span> Indian politician

Sachindra Nath Bakshi was a prominent Indian revolutionary and one of the founding members of Hindustan Republican Association that was created to carry out revolutionary activities against the British Empire in India.

Keshab Chakravarty was an Indian freedom fighter and one of the youth involved in the Kakori conspiracy.

Banwari Lal Bhargava was a member of HRA, who participated in the Kakori train robbery, carried out in August 1925 to buy ammunition for revolutionary activities and protests against British rule in India. He lived in Shahjahanpur, in the present-day state of Uttar Pradesh, India. He became an approver in the subsequent court case concerning that robbery for monetary gains and to evade punishment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sachindra Nath Sanyal</span> Indian revolutionary (1890–1942)

Sachindra Nath Sanyal was an Indian revolutionary and co-founder of the Hindustan Republican Association that was created to carry out armed resistance against the British Empire in India. He was a mentor for revolutionaries like Chandra Shekhar Azad, Jatindra Nath Das, and Bhagat Singh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genda Lal Dixit</span> Indian revolutionary

Genda Lal Dixit was an Indian revolutionary who worked as a school-teacher at Auraiya in the district of Etawah, United Provinces, British India. He led a group of Indian freedom fighters (revolutionaries), known as the Shivaji Samiti, who engaged in subversive activities against the British Raj.

Murari Lal Gupta, also known as Murari Sharma was an Indian revolutionary who took part in the Kakori Conspiracy and absconded away. Police could not trace him out as Murari Sharma was his fake name.

Prem Kishan Khanna was an Indian freedom fighter and active member of the Hindustan Republican Association from Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh. Khanna worked as a contractor for the Indian Railways and was a close associate of the noted revolutionary Ram Prasad Bismil.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jagat Narain Mulla</span>

Pandit Jagat Narain Mulla was a prominent lawyer and public prosecutor in United Provinces during the British Raj. Motilal Nehru served as the public prosecutor on behalf of the British in the Kakori case but, instead of using his own name, he submitted the name of his cousin and junior, Pandit Jagat Narayan Mulla.

Kakori railway station is a small railway station in Lucknow district, Uttar Pradesh. Its code is KKJ. It serves Kakori village.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shiv Verma</span> Member of Hindustan Socialist Republic Army

Shiv Verma was an Indian Marxist revolutionary and a member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association.

Communists were actively involved in Indian independence movement through multiple series of protests, strikes and other activities. It was a part of revolutionary movement for Indian independence. Their main thrust was on organising peasants and working classes across India against the British and Indian capitalists and landlords.

References

  1. ↑ "Villages Of Kakori | District Lucknow , Government of Uttar Pradesh | India" . Retrieved 30 October 2024.
  2. ↑ "How 1925 Kakori train dacoity led India to a revolutionary path for Independence". The Economic Times. 14 August 2024. ISSN   0013-0389 . Retrieved 30 October 2024.
  3. ↑ Dr. Mehrotra N. C. Swatantrata Andolan Mein Shahjahanpur Ka Yogdan p. 117.
  4. ↑ Dr. Mahaur Bhagwandas Kakori Shaheed Smriti p. 30
  5. ↑ Sharma Vidyarnav Yug Ke Devta: Bismil Aur Ashfaq p. 118
  6. ↑ "Kakori Action: 12 quick facts you need to know". India Today. 9 August 2016. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  7. ↑ "100 years ago, when a train robbery shook the Empire" .
  8. ↑ Dr. Mehrotra N. C. Swatantrata Andolan Mein Shahjahanpur Ka Yogdan, pp. 124–125.
  9. ↑ Dr. Mehrotra N. C. Swatantrata Andolan Mein Shahjahanpur Ka Yogdan p. 130.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.