Two Letters on the Case of the Harikishan Trial

(January-February 1931)

Bhagat Singh wrote two letters in reference to young revolutionary Harikishan’s case, who had thrown a bomb on the Governor of Punjab on 23rd December 1930, during the Punjab University convocation at Lahore. Despite being the son of a very rich and influential personality, Gurdas Ram Talwar of Mardan, now in the Khyber Pakhtunwa province of Pakistan, he was bound to get the death sentence, which Bhagat Singh correctly understood. But Harikishan’s lawyers in order to defend him, made some averments in his petition, which did not enhance the respect of a revolutionary. Bhagat Singh was very upset at this and wrote to his unnamed contact about it. The first of his letters did not reach its destination and was ‘lost’, as Bhagat Singh himself mentions in his second letter, almost a repetition of arguments made in first letter. The first letter, till now considered to be lost, was published in the 18th June 1931 issue of Hindu Panch from Calcutta in an Hindi translation, which was sent to this editor courtesy Dr. Raghuvir Singh and Ram Sharma from Beena. Since the original English is yet to be found, here retranslation from Hindi to English has been done by this author. Harikishan was hanged on 9th June 1931 in Lahore jail.

Chaman Lal