Bhagat Singh, (born September 27, 1907, Lyallpur, western Punjab, India [now in Pakistan]— Died- March 23, 1931, Lahore [now in Pakistan]), revolutionary hero of the Indian independence movement.
- Bhagat Singh joined the Hindustan Republican Association, a radical group, later known as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association.
- He established contact with the members of the Kirti Kisan Party and started contributing regularly to its magazine ”the kriti”.
- In March 1926, the Naujawan Bharat Sabha was formed with Bhagat Singh, as its secretary.
- As an avenge to the death of Lala Lajpat Rai, Bhagat Singh and his associates plotted the assassination of Scott, the Superintendent of Police, believed to have ordered the lathi charge.
- The revolutionaries, mistaking J.P. Saunders, an Assistant Superintendent of Police, as Scott, killed him instead. Bhagat Singh quickly left Lahore to escape his arrest.
- Although a Sikh by birth, he shaved his beard and cut his hair to avoid being recognised and arrested for the killing. He managed to escape from Lahore to Calcutta.
- A year later, he and Batukeshwar Dutt threw bombs in the Central Assembly Hall in Delhi, and shouted “Inquilab Zindabad!” He did not resist his arrest at this point.
- During interrogation, the British came to know about his involvement in the death of John Saunders a year earlier.
- In response to the formulation of Defence of India Act, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association planned to explode a bomb inside the assembly premises, where the ordinance was going to be passed.
- At the time of his trial, he didn’t offer any defence, rather used the occasion to propagate the idea of India’s freedom.
- On April 8, 1929 Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw a bomb onto the associated himself with The Statesman and Basumati.
- His death sentence was pronounced on 7 October 1930, which he heard with defiant courage.
- During his stay in jail, he went on a hunger strike against the policy of better treatment for prisoners of foreign origin.
- He was sentenced to be hanged on 24 March 1931, but it was brought forward by 11 hours to 23 March 1931 at 7:30 p.m.
- It is said that no magistrate was willing to supervise the hanging. After the original death warrants expired it was an honorary judge who signed and oversaw the hanging.
- Legend says, Bhagat Singh marched to the gallows with a smile on his face and his one last act of defiance was shouting “Down with British imperialism.”
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