Pak lawyer making all-out efforts to prove Bhagat Singh innocent

Chandigarh, June 11

Eightyeight years after freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were hanged in the Lahore conspiracy case on March 23, 1931, efforts are on across the border to prove that the martyrs did not get a fair trial.

Last week, the Lahore police submitted in a Pakistan trial court the FIR registered in the murder of British police official John Saunders, claiming that the case was registered against “unidentified” persons.

The court handed over a copy of the FIR to Lahore-based advocate and petitioner Imtiaz Rashid Qureshi. 

Qureshi, who is the chairman of the Bhagat Singh Memorial Foundation, had filed a petition seeking an attested copy of the FIR registered. He has also moved the Lahore High Court seeking reopening of the Saunders’ murder case to prove that Bhagat Singh was “innocent”. He said it was on the court’s order that the Lahore police searched through the records of the Anarkali police station and managed to find the FIR in the Saunders’ murder case.

“The FIR was registered at 4.30 pm on December 17, 1928, against two unknown gunmen. The names of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru are nowhere in the FIR,” said Qureshi.  He is hopeful that if the court sets aside the verdict against Bhagat Singh, the UK government could be pressured to apologise for the “sham trial”. — IANS