British refused Bhagat Singh's wish to die soldier's death

Ferozpur, Mar 21 (UNI) Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh wanted to meet a soldier's death and had requested the British authorities that he and his associates, Sukhdev and Rajguru, either be blown by a cannon or be shot dead instead of hanged like criminals.

Bhagat Singh had written to the Punjab Governor just before their execution that as all of them had fought like soldiers to free their motherland from the British Colonial rule, they should be granted the honour of dying like soldiers --- either by cannon or by gun.

However, the Punjab governor paid no heed to the request. The Britishers were so paranoid of Bhagat Singh's heroic persona that they not only hanged him before dawn, ahead of the scheduled time on March 23, they also kept his body on the noose for about an hour.

''They were scared that the indomitable spirit of the martyr will spring back to life,'' Bhagat Singh's kin Yadvendra Singh told UNI adding this fact came to light from the statements of the Superintendent and surgeon of Lahore jail, where the martyrs were executed in a hurried and hush-hush manner.

Mr Yadvendra Singh, son of Bhagat Singh's nephew late Babbar Singh and Prof K C Yadav who is involved with compiling a ten-volume series on the martyr told UNI that at least 22 people had on different occasions, described the last days spent by Bhagat Singh in Lahore Jail.

Even the warden of the jail, along with Muslim, Hindu and Sikh prisoners, used to cry inconsolably for the young Bhagat and his friends who seemed to laugh at death. Bhagat Singh's jailmate Shiv Verma once became adamant that Bhagat should go for an appeal against the death sentence but the freedom fighter explained that they knew the case against them was weak and did not want that their death sentence be revoked.

Bhagat had stressed at that time that they wanted to embrace death so that the sleeping conscience of their countrymen be stirred with the love of nation and they join the fight to free India from the British rule, said Mr Singh adding that Dwarka Das, librarian Chhabil Das, Veer Pratap founder Virendra and Durga Bhabhi, who had been closely associated with Bhagat Singh's revolutionary activities have talked about his last days in jail.

The Bhagat Singh Foundation planned to take out ten volumes on the great martyr's life of which five were already available in the market and the rest will come out by March next year. The fifth and latest volume in the series was titled ''Bhagat Singh: The Making of a Revolutionary'', Prof K C Yadav said.

UNI