Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev yet to get martyr status in govt records

An RTI reply mentions that Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were radical youth who were militants.

The Indian government is yet to give martyr status to freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru, who sacrificed their lives for the sake of the country. This has been revealed following an RTI query by the Indian Council of Historical Research.

It has been revealed with the RTI query that successive governments ignored the martyrdom of the great freedom fighters of our country.

The RTI query was filed by Jammu-based activist Rohit Chowdhary.

What’s more shocking is that the RTI reply mentions that Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were radical youth who were militants.

In his RTI query, Chowdhary had sought to know whether the three freedom fighters were given martyr status. But the reply by the Home Ministry came as a shocker as it mentioned the trio as radical youth and not martyrs.

Reacting to the development, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Vikram Singh Randhawa said that the party would take cognisance of the same on high priority.

The reply to the RTI query makes it evident how governments, cutting across party lines, ignored the contribution of martyrs to the Indian freedom struggle.

Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were hanged by the British on March 23, 1931, following a verdict in the Ghadar conspiracy case. The trio had killed British officer John Saunders, mistaking him to be James Scott, the English police officer who had order lathicharge leading to Lala Lajpat Rai’s death.

Bhagat Singh was 23, Sukhdev was 24 and Rajguru was just 22-year-old at the time of their death.