March 23, 1931, had started like any other day in Lahore Central Jail. The only difference was that there was a strong storm early in the morning.
But the jail prisoners felt a bit strange when at four o'clock Warden Charat Singh came and asked them to go to their respective cells. He did not give the reason.
The only thing that came out of his mouth was that the order was from above. While the prisoners were wondering what the matter was, the jail barber Barkat passed by every room whispering that Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were going to be hanged tonight.
The carelessness of that moment shocked him.
The prisoners requested Barkat to bring back any thing belonging to Bhagat Singh like a pen, comb or watch after the hanging so that they could tell their grandchildren that they too were once imprisoned with Bhagat Singh.
Barkat went to Bhagat Singh's room and brought his pen and comb from there. There was a competition among all the prisoners as to who would have authority over him. At last the draw was conducted.
Now all the prisoners became silent. His eyes were fixed on the path passing through his cell. Bhagat Singh and his comrades were about to pass through the same route to be hanged.
Once earlier, when Bhagat Singh was being taken through the same route, Punjab Congress leader Bhimsen Sachar had raised his voice and asked him, "Why did you and your comrades not defend yourself in the Lahore Conspiracy Case."
Bhagat Singh's reply was, "Revolutionaries have to die, because their campaign is strengthened only by their death, not by appeal in the court."
Warden Charat Singh was well-wisher of Bhagat Singh and did whatever he could for him. It was because of him that books for Bhagat Singh were able to come out of the Dwarkadas Library of Lahore and enter the jail.
Bhagat Singh was so fond of reading books that he once wrote to his schoolmate Jaidev Kapoor to send him Karl Liebknecht's 'Militarism', Lenin's 'Left Wing Communism' and Upton Sinclair's novel 'The Spy' through Kulbir.
Bhagat Singh had become accustomed to the difficult life of jail. The floor of his cell number 14 was not concrete. There was grass growing on it. There was only so much space in the cell that his five feet, ten inches tall body could barely lie down in it.
Two hours before Bhagat Singh was hanged, his lawyer Pran Nath Mehta came to meet him. Mehta later wrote that 'Bhagat Singh was pacing around in his small room like a caged lion.'
He welcomed Mehta with a smile and asked whether you brought my book 'Revolutionary Lenin' or not? When Mehta gave him the book, he started reading it immediately as if he did not have much time left.
Mehta asked him whether he would like to give any message to the country? Without taking his face off the book, Bhagat Singh said, “Only two messages…Down with imperialism and Long live the revolution!”
After this, Bhagat Singh asked Mehta to convey my thanks to Pandit Nehru and Subhash Bose, who had taken keen interest in my case. After meeting Bhagat Singh, Mehta reached Rajguru's cell to meet him.
Rajguru's last words were, "We will meet soon."
Sukhdev reminds Mehta that after his death, he should take the carrom board from the jailer which he had given him a few months ago.
Shortly after Mehta's departure, the jail authorities informed the three revolutionaries that they were being hanged 12 hours before the scheduled time. Instead of six in the morning the next day, he would be hanged at seven in the evening.
Bhagat Singh was able to read only a few pages of the book given by Mehta. Out of his mouth came, "Will you not let me finish even one chapter of this book?"
Bhagat Singh had requested Bebe, the Muslim jail cleaning staff, to bring food for him from her home the evening before he was to be hanged.
But Bebe could not fulfill this wish of Bhagat Singh, because the decision to hang Bhagat Singh was taken twelve hours earlier and Bebe could not enter the jail gate.
After some time, the three revolutionaries were taken out of their cells to prepare for hanging. Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev joined their hands and started singing their favorite freedom song-
someday that day will come
that when we are free
This will be our own land
This will be our sky.
Then the weight of these three was taken one by one. Everyone's weight had increased. All of them were told to take their last bath. Then they were dressed in black clothes. But their faces were allowed to remain open.
Charat Singh whispered in Bhagat Singh's ear that he should remember his Guru.
Bhagat Singh said, "All my life I have not remembered God. In fact, I have cursed God many times for the sufferings of the poor. If I apologize to him now, he will say that there is no one more cowardly than him. The end is coming near. That is why he has come to apologize."
As the prison clock struck 6, the prisoners heard some footsteps coming from a distance. Along with them, the sounds of heavy boots hitting the ground were also heard. Along with this, the subdued tone of a song was also heard, "The desire of Sarfaroshi is now in our hearts..."
Suddenly everyone started hearing loud slogans of 'Inquilab Zindabad' and 'Hindustan Azad Ho'. The gallows was old but the person who was hanged was quite healthy. Masih the executioner was called from Shahdara near Lahore to execute him.
Bhagat Singh was standing in the middle of those three. Bhagat Singh wanted to fulfill the promise given to his mother that he would raise the slogan of 'Inquilab Zindabad' from the gallows.
The house of Lahore District Congress Secretary Pindi Das Sondhi was adjacent to Lahore Central Jail. Bhagat Singh raised the slogan of 'Inquilab Zindabad' so loudly that his voice was heard till Sondhi's house.
On hearing his voice, other prisoners of the jail also started raising slogans. A hanging rope was put around the neck of the three young revolutionaries. His hands and feet were tied. Then the executioner asked, who will go first?
Sukhdev was the first to agree to be hanged. The executioner pulled the rope one by one and removed the planks under their feet by kicking them. Their bodies remained hanging from the planks for a long time.
Finally he was brought down and the doctors present there, Lieutenant Colonel JJ Nelson and Lieutenant Colonel NS Sodhi, declared him dead.
This hanging had such an impact on a jail officer that when he was asked to identify the dead, he refused to do so. He was suspended at the same place. A junior officer did this work.
Earlier the plan was that the last rites of all of them would be performed inside the jail itself, but then this idea had to be abandoned when the officials realized that the crowd standing outside could attack the jail after seeing the smoke rising from the jail.
Therefore the back wall of the jail was broken. Through the same route, a truck was brought inside the jail and those dead bodies were put on it like luggage in a very humiliating manner.
Earlier it was decided that his last rites would be performed on the banks of Ravi, but there was very little water in Ravi, so it was decided to burn the dead bodies on the banks of Sutlej.
His mortal remains were brought to the banks of Sutlej near Firozpur. By then it was 10 o'clock at night.
Meanwhile, Deputy Superintendent of Police Kasur Sudarshan Singh called a priest Jagdish Acharaj from Kasur village.
They had just been set on fire when people came to know about it. As soon as the British soldiers saw people coming towards them, they left the dead bodies there and ran towards their vehicles. The village people stood guard around those dead bodies the whole night.
The next day around noon, notices signed by the District Magistrate were pasted in many areas of Lahore stating that Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were cremated as per Hindu and Sikh rituals on the banks of Sutlej.
There was a strong reaction from the people on this news and people said that far from being cremated, they were not even burnt completely.
The District Magistrate denied this but no one believed him.
In honor of these three, a three-mile long mourning procession started from Neela Gumbad. Men wore black bands on their arms in protest and women wore black sarees.
Almost everyone had black flags in their hands. The procession passing through the Mall of Lahore stopped in the middle of Anarkali Bazaar.
Suddenly there was silence in the entire crowd when it was announced that Bhagat Singh's family had reached there from Ferozepur with the remaining remains of the three martyrs.
In his 30-year career, he had witnessed hundreds of hangings, but no one had embraced death as bravely as Bhagat Singh and his two comrades.
No one had any idea that 16 years later his martyrdom would prove to be a reason for the end of the British Empire in India and all British soldiers would leave Indian soil forever.
