Kakori conspiracy

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

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. 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. One passenger was killed unintentionally.

Robbery

On 9 August 1925, the Number 8 Down Train was travelling from Shahjahanpur to Lucknow. 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) and escaped to Lucknow. The objectives of this robbery were to:

• Fund the HRA with the money of British administration taxed from the Indians.
• To protest against the British administration collecting a lot of tax from Indians.
• Garner public attention by creating a positive image of the HRA among Indians.

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

• From Agra
  • Chandra Dhar Johri – 19 November 1925
  • Chandra Bhal Johri – 15 November 1925
• From Prayagraj
  • Shitala Sahai – 2 November 1925
  • Jyoti Shankar Dixit – 11 November 1925
  • Bhupendra Nath Sanyal – 16 December 1925
• From Orai
  • Veer Bhadra Tiwari – 31 October 1925
• From Benares
  • Manmathnath Gupta – 26 September 1925
  • Damodar Swarup Seth – 28 September 1925
  • Ram Nath Pandey – 27 September 1925
  • Dev Dutt Bhattacharya – 21 October 1925
  • Indra Vikram Singh – 30 September 1925
  • Mukundi Lal – 17 January 1926
• From Bengal
  • Sachindra Nath Sanyal – 10 December 1925
  • Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee – 21 December 1925
  • Rajendra Nath Lahiri – 10 January 1926
  • Sharat Chandra Guha – 5 October 1925
  • Kali Das Bose – 2 November 1925
• From Etah
  • Babu Ram Verma – 10 November 1925
• From Hardoi
  • Bhairon Singh – 11 November 1925
• From Jabalpur
  • Pranawesh Chatterjee – 11 December 1925
• From Kanpur
  • Ram Dulare Trivedi – 26 September 1925
  • Gopi Mohan – 25 October 1925
  • Raj Kumar Sinha – 31 October 1925
  • Suresh Chandra Bhattacharya – 26 September 1925
• From Lahore
  • Mohan Lal Gautam – 18 November 1925
• From Lakhimpur
  • Harnam Sundarlal – 7 November 1925
• From Lucknow
  • Govind Charan Kar – 26 September 1925
  • Sachindranath Biswas – 6 October 1925
• From Meerut
  • Vishnu Sharan Dublish – 26 September 1925
• From Pune
  • Ram Krishna Khatri – 18 October 1925
• From Raebareli
  • Banwari Lal – 15 December 1925
• From Shahjahanpur
  • Ram Prasad Bismil – 26 October 1925
  • Banarsi Lal – 26 September 1925
  • Lala Hargovind – 26 September 1925
  • Prem Krishna Khanna – 26 September 1925
  • Indubhushan Mitra – 30 September 1925
  • Thakur Roshan Singh – 26 September 1925
  • Ram Dutt Shukla – 3 October 1925
  • Madan Lal – 10 October 1925
  • Ram Ratna Shukla – 11 October 1925

Arrested later —

• From Delhi
  • Ashfaqullah Khan – 7 December 1926
• From Pratapgarh
  • Sachindranath Bakshi – September 1926

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 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.

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:

• Death sentence: Ram Prasad Bismil, Roshan Singh, Rajendra Nath Lahiri and Ashfaqullah Khan
• Deportation to Kala Pani (Port Blair Cellular Jail): Sachindranath Sanyal, Sachindranath Bakshi, Govind Charan Kar, Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee and Mukundi Lal
• 14 years' imprisonment: Manmathnath Gupta
• 10 years' imprisonment: Raj Kumar Sinha, Vishnu Sharan Dublish, Ram Krishna Khatri and Suresh Chandra Bhattacharya
• 5 years' imprisonment: Bhupendranath Sanyal, Prem Krishna Khanna, Banwari Lal and Ram Dulare Trivedi
• 4 years' imprisonment: Pranawesh Chatterjee
• 3 years' imprisonment: Ram Nath Pandey

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 prisoner	Name of the Jail	Days of hunger strike
Ram Prasad Bismil	Gorakhpur Central Jail	4 days (from 7 April 1927 to 11 April 1927)
Roshan Singh	Allahabad Jail	6 days (from 7 April 1927 to 13 April 1927)
Ram Nath Pandey	Raibareli District Jail	11 days (from 7 April 1927 to 18 April 1927)
Prem Krishna Khanna	Dehradun District Jail	16 days (from 7 April 1927 to 23 April 1927)
Suresh Chandra Bhattacharya	Agra Central Jail	19 days (from 7 April 1927 to 26 April 1927)
Ram Krishna Khatri	Agra Central Jail	32 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 Jail	41 days (from 7 April 1927 to 18 May 1927)
Ram Dulare Trivedi	Fatehgarh Jail	41 days (from 7 April 1927 to 18 May 1927)
Govind Charan Kar	Fatehgarh Jail	41 days (from 7 April 1927 to 18 May 1927)
Manmath Nath Gupta	Naini Allahabad Jail	45 days (from 7 April 1927 to 22 May 1927)
Vishnu Sharan Dublish	Naini Allahabad Jail	45 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.

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.

See also

• Ashfaqulla Khan
• Sukhdev Thapar
• Shivaram Rajguru

Further reading

• Gupta, Amit Kumar (September–October 1997). "Defying Death: Nationalist Revolutionism in India, 1897–1938". Social Scientist. 25 (9/10): 3–27. doi:10.2307/3517678. JSTOR 3517678. (subscription required)