In amended plea, Lahore lawyer seeks to make Britain a party in Bhagat Singh case
Queen Elizabeth should come to Shadman Chowk, Lahore... and tender an apology to the people of India and Pakistan for killing their heroes. IMTIAZ R QURESHI , Pakistani lawyer
HOSHIARPUR : Pakistani advocate Imtiaz Rashid Qureshi of Bhagat Singh Memorial Foundation, who has filed a plea in the Lahore high court for early hearing of the case to prove innocence of freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev who were hanged on March 23, 1931, is all set to file an amended petition in the court to make the British government a party in the case. The three young men were sentenced to death in the murder case of British police officer John P Saunders.
“We will seek an apology from the British government. Queen Elizabeth should come to Shadman Chowk, Lahore, where the three freedom fighters were hanged, and tender an apology to the people of India and Pakistan for killing their heroes. We will also demand compensation to the kin of the martyrs from the British government,” said Qureshi, who is visiting Bhagat Singh’s kin in Hoshiarpur these days, on Tuesday.
To authenticate his plea that Bhagat Singh and his comrades were revolutionaries and not killers, the petitioner has cited the FIR on Saunders’ killing which was registered with Anarkali police station in Lahore on December 17, 1928, against two unknown gunmen under sections 302 (murder) and other charges as per the Indian Penal Code. He has submitted in the court that the tribunal constituted by the then Punjab governor did not give a fair opportunity to the defence and awarded the death penalty without hearing the 450 witnesses.
In February, a division bench of the Lahore HC had asked the Chief Justice of Pakistan to constitute a larger bench to hear the petition but the same is yet to come by. “We will file an amended petition at the time of fresh hearing to make British government a party in the case as it was at its behest that Bhagat Singh and others were convicted in a false case,” Qureshi said.
For Bhagat Singh’s family, he has brought water from a handpump and foliage of the mango tree in the ancestral home of Bhagat Singh in Banga village of Faisalabad, for his nieces Gurjit Kaur and Bhupinder Kaur here.