Satvinder Singh Juss on the farcical trial of Bhagat Singh

Meet Malhotra

Ninety years ago, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were hanged to death on the evening of March 23, 1931, 11 hours before the time fixed for the execution of their death warrants.

Coinciding with the anniversary comes ‘The Execution of Bhagat Singh’, a book on the infamous trial by Satvinder Singh Juss. The detailed and scholarly work draws as much from the assiduously studied record of the trial as seeking to, simultaneously, project the enigma of one of India’s greatest heroes. Bhagat Singh and his companions were subjected to two trials; one for the smoke bomb incident at the Central Legislative Assembly in April 1929 in Delhi (the bomb case) and the other for the murder of police probationer John Saunders on December 17, 1928 (Lahore conspiracy case). In the first trial, Bhagat Singh was sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment and was awarded the death sentence in the Lahore conspiracy case. Both trials were marked by breach of all that constituted the “rule of law”. The accused were not permitted legal representation, not allowed to meet family members, severely beaten up even in the court, not permitted to cross-examine the prosecution witnesses. So much for British fair play and its vaunted legal system! On the other hand, the ‘anarchist’ Bhagat Singh showed rare courage of conviction in his views regarding use of violence as a political tool to free India of the oppressive British rule. Bhagat Singh and his companions knew they were doomed and were ready to embrace the hangman’s noose, if only to awaken the etherised political consciousness of the country. It is sad indeed that men of such mettle have not been given their due, where other contemporary protagonists over-rode and squeezed out the narrative of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev and others. The nation today guiltily remembers them only on martyr’s day, draws little or nothing from their supreme sacrifice and promptly goes back to the mundanity of a daily routine.

‘The Execution of Bhagat Singh’ is an essential read for those to whom Bhagat Singh and what he stood for still means something. The book recounts, in some detail, the day-to-day goings-on of the trial, the openly biased conduct of the presiding officers and the sheer chicanery at every stage of the trial, which resulted in what can only be described as judicial murder. The trial had run a few months, many prosecution witness examined, when the then Governor-General Lord Irwin transferred the proceedings to a special tribunal. The tribunal had a lifespan of only six months, so proceedings had to be truncated. Prosecution witnesses waiting to be examined were abandoned and those who were examined could not be cross-examined. It was on the strength of such a farcical trial that Bhagat Singh and his companions were hanged to death.

The book will, inevitably, draw comparisons with AG Noorani’s ‘The Trial of Bhagat Singh’. Both have been authored by men of letters and law. The book by Juss, a London-based law professor, is more detailed, but reads the heavier for it. However, anecdotes relating to the accused are in abundance here and interwoven with recounting of a little more of the socio-political milieu.

After reading the book you will soon forget the details of the narrative, but not the epochal portrayal of Bhagat Singh on the cover, nor his efforts and those of his companions, who tried to make “the deaf hear” by embracing martyrdom — an event that we, as a nation, casually acknowledge and so easily forget.