Bhagat Singh’s pistol to be displayed at Hussainiwala
THE PISTOL WAS REQUISITIONED BY THE BSF FROM THE PUNJAB POLICE ACADEMY IN OCTOBER 1969, WHERE IT HAD BEEN SINCE 1944
CHANDIGARH: A pistol used by freedom fighter Bhagat Singh is back in Punjab and will be displayed at the Hussainiwala border museum in Ferozepur district. The Border Security Force (BSF) gave this information to the Punjab and Haryana high court on Monday.
Arun Kumar Tambe, a deputy inspector general of the BSF unit of Indore, Madhya Pradesh, from where the pistol was recently retrieved, told the HC that orders were issued for the move on April 25 by the BSF headquarters. Hussainiwala houses a memorial to Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev, where they were cremated.
The information was given during resumed hearing of a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by advocate HC Arora seeking retrieval of the pistol from the BSF museum in Indore for displaying it at a museum in Khatkar Kalan, Bhagat Singh’s native village in Shaheed Bhagat Singh (SBS) Nagar district, formerly Nawanshahr. All other articles related to Bhagat Singh are displayed there.
The last bullet fired from the .32-mm Colt automatic pistol killed British assistant superintendent of police John Saunders on December 17, 1928. The pistol was requisitioned by the BSF from the Punjab Police Academy in Phillaur in October 1969, where it had been since 1944, three years before Partition, on being received from the officials in Lahore.
In November 2016, an English daily reported about the pistol being displayed at the BSF museum in Indore.