#29 The Valorous and Chauvinist Son of India : Chandrashekhar Azad!

The matter is of the year 1925, Shatindernath Bakshi, Ashfaqullah Khan, Rajendra Lahiri were in the second class compartment of the passenger train, they were entrusted with the task of pulling the chain at a certain place and getting the train parked, the remaining seven people Ramprasad Bismil, Keshav Chakraborty, Murarilal Makundilal, Banwari Lal, Manmathnath Gupt and Chandrashekhar Azad were in the third class compartment of the same train, some of them were assigned the task of apprehending the guard and the driver, while the rest were tasked with guarding both sides of the vehicle and looting the treasure. 

By the time the car chain was pulled, it was dark, the guard and driver were laid on their stomachs and the safe was thrown down from the train. The safe was knocked down from the train, the safe was quite heavy and strong, it began to be broken with hammers and chisels, even the thick chest was forced to open its mouth by Ashfaqullah's hammer, forcing the treasure inside.

There was a lot of cash and money in the vault, so they tied it in a bale and the revolutionaries made their way to Lucknow on foot, as soon as they entered the city, the treasure was kept in a safe place, the places of stay of those people were already fixed there. They all went away, but Chandrashekhar Azad spent the night sitting in a park, in the early morning the newspaper seller was seen shouting - 'Sensational robbery near Kakori.'

The British rule was stunned by this train robbery, the people of the Intelligence Department started keeping a watch on all those people who were suspected to be revolutionary, 47 days later i.e. on 26 September, 1925, raids were conducted at various places in Uttar Pradesh. Of these, four were hanged, four were sentenced to life imprisonment for Kala Pani and 17 were sentenced to long imprisonment.

Only Chandrashekhar Azad and Kundan Lal were not caught by the police, the British police could never catch Azad alive.

Chandrashekhar Azad 

What was famous about Azad was that his aim was formidable.

On December 17, 1927, when Bhagat Singh and Rajguru were running towards DAV College after killing the British DSP John Sounders, a police constable Chanan Singh was running after them, Chandrashekhar Azad, watching the whole view from the hostel, must have guessed that Bhagat Singh and Rajguru had emptied their pistols at Sounders and had no bullets left.

Shiv Verma, who was a companion of Chandrashekhar Azad, writes in his book 'Reminiscences of Fellow Revolutionaries' -
'It was a race of life and death and the distance between the two was slowly getting smaller, the running arm of Chanan Singh was about to catch them, but before Chanan Singh could do so, a bullet was fired at his thigh. He fell over and later died due to excessive bleeding, this bullet was fired by Chandrashekhar Azad from his Mauser pistol.'
Azad had this habit that whenever any of his companions were caught who knew or his place of residence, he would immediately change his place of residence and if needed his city too, perhaps this was the reason why the police could not find him for years, despite many people's reporting.
On February 27, 1931, Azad was talking with his colleague Sukhdev Raj at Alfred Park in Allahabad, when a car came to a halt on the road in front of which one British officer Nott Bower and two constables in white robes got down.

Sukhdev Raj writes -
'That as soon as the car halted, our heads bowed, the white officer came straight towards us with a pistol in his hand and showing the pistol, asked us in English - Who are you and what are you doing here? Azad's hand was on his pistol and my hand on mine, we answered his question by firing, but the white officer's pistol went first and his bullet hit Azad's thigh, Azad's bullet hit the white officer's shoulder, bullets were fired from both sides. It was going on, the officer ran back and took the cover of the Moulfi tree, his soldiers jumped and got hid in the drain, while we made the Jamun tree as our cover, the fight stopped for a moment, then Azad said to me, I got shot in the thigh, you get out of here.'

The Valorous.

Where later Nott Bower said in a press statement -

'I got a message from Thakur Vishweshwar Singh that he had seen a man in Alfred Park whose appearance resembles that of Chandrashekhar Azad, I took Mohammad Zaman and Govind Singh constable with me, I parked the car and headed towards them. Growing up, I asked him from a distance of about ten yards, who are they? In response, he took out a pistol and fired at me, my pistol was already ready, I fired at him too, while I was taking out the magazine and filling the second, Azad fired at me, causing the magazine to fall down from my left hand, then I ran towards a tree, meanwhile Vishweshwar Singh crawled into the bush, from there he fired at Azad, in response Azad also fired which hit Vishweshwar Singh's jaw. Whenever I appeared, Azad kept firing at me, in the end he fell on his back, in the meantime a constable came with a shotgun which was full, I did not knew whether Azad was dead or pretending to be, I asked that constable to take a aim at Azad's feet, when I went there after he opened fire, Azad was lying dead, one of his companions had run away. While leaving, Nott Bower instructed that Chandrashekhar Azad should be searched and then sent for post-mortem and Vishweshwar Singh should be immediately taken to the hospital, on search of Azad's body, Rs 448 and 16 pills were found from him. The trees behind both sides were marked with bullets, the car parked behind Nott Bower was also shot and its body had three holes. Azad's body was post-mortemed by Civil Surgeon Lieutenant Colonel Taunsand, two magistrates Khan Saheb Rehman Baksh Qadri and Mahendra Pal Singh were present at the time. Azad had two bullet wounds in the lower part of his right leg, bullets from his tibial. The bone was also fractured, one bullet went through the right thigh, one bullet had entered the brain by piercing the parietal bone on the right side of the head and the other bullet had hit the right lung, piercing his right shoulder.'

Vishwanath Vaishampayan writes –

'As Azad's body was heavy, it could not be carried on the stretcher. Since Chandrashekhar Azad was a Brahmin, Brahmin recruits were called from the police line and the dead body was picked up from them and kept in the lorry, meanwhile Congress leader Purushottam Das Tandon reached there but the lorry had left with Azad's body, until Tandon and Kamla Nehru reached Rasulabad Ghat, Azad's body was burnt, his relative Shiv Vinayak Mishra brought his ashes to the city. A procession was taken out from Khaddar Bhandar, a black sheet was laid on a wooden plank on which the ashes were laid, the procession traversed the city reached Purushottam Das Tandon Park, flowers were showered on the ashes at many places in the city. The speeches of Purushottam Das Tandon, Kamala Nehru, Mangal Dev Singh and Sachindra Sanyal's wife Pratima Sanyal were held in Tandon Park, on that day there was a strike in the entire city. Vishwanath Vaishampayan writes in his book 'Amar Shaheed Chandrashekhar Azad' - 'The CID superintendent admitted that he had rarely seen shooters like Azad, especially when he was being fired from three directions, if the first bullet had not hit Azad in the thigh, it would have been very difficult for the police. Because Nott Bower's hand was already useless.'

News Clipping of the incident.

After Nott Bower retired, Azad's pistol was gifted to the government and he took it with him to England, later Mustafi, that time Commissioner of Allahabad, who later became the Vice-Chancellor of Lucknow University, wrote a letter to Bower to return the pistol but Bower did not respond to it.

Later, after the effort of the Indian High Commission in London, Bower agreed to return it on the condition that the Government of India had to made a written request to him, his condition was accepted and in 1972 this Colt pistol returned to India and on February 27, 1973 after the ceremony of Shashindranath Bakshi's presidency, it was kept in the Lucknow Museum, after a few years when the Allahabad Museum was ready, it was brought to a special room there.

Azad’s Colt Pistol.

Every day a crowd of people started gathering at the tree under which Azad had died, people started garlanding flowers and lighting lamps there. Overnight the British government quickly cut down that tree and erased its name and leveled the land, its wood was picked up by lorry and thrown elsewhere.

Later, Azad's fans planted another Jamun tree at the same place, with the end of Azad, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army had started to disintegrate.

Within a month, on March 23, 1931, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were also hanged, the death of so many leaders in such a short time shocked HSRA from which it could never emerge.

India will always be indebted to him.

If your blood still doesn’t rage, then it’s not blood, it’s water ~ Azad

Koo