KAKORI TRAIN ROBBERY
SHREYA BORAH (IInd Year, Miranda House)
The Kakori train robbery was an important milestone in the Indian freedom movement. It was an armed train robbery which took place in a village near Lucknow called Kakori, on 9th August 1925. It was organized by Ram Prasad Bismil and Ashfaqullah Khan of the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA), later the Hindustan Socialist Republic Association.
The Kakori conspiracy involves the robbery itself and the historical trial which was carried out by the colonial government against more than twenty men, accused of being involved in this felony. Kakori is located 16 kms away from the main town of Lucknow. The train transported money, which was collected from the various intervening stations, to the British Government Treasury in Lucknow. The Hindustan Republican Association was a revolutionary organization fighting for Indian independence and against British colonization. On the day of the robbery, the Number 8 Down Train was traveling from Shahjahanpur to Lucknow. When it reached Kakori, Ramprasad Bismil, Indian revolutionary, along with a group of ten revolutionary activists halted the train, restrained the guard and passengers, and opened the safe in the guard’s quarters before leaving with the cash.
The money, which was approximately 8000 rupees, was required to buy weaponry and fund the activities of the organization. One of the passengers in the train, Ahmad Ali, was killed accidentally by Manmathnath Gupta. This led to the arrest of around 40 people from across the country, under charges of robbery and murder. Ram Prasad Bismil was arrested at Shahjahanpur on 26 October 1925 and Ashfaqullah Khan was arrested on 7 December 1926 at Delhi.
A number of the arrested were released due to lack of evidence. The special magistrate at Lucknow put 29 of them on trial. Of those, three—including Chandrasekhar Azad, a leader of the HRA—remained at large, and two others, Banarsi Lal and Indubhushan Mitra became witnesses for the prosecution in return for shorter sentences. Jagat Narayan Mulla, lawyer and public prosecutor in the United Provinces, was appointed as the public prosecutor for this trial by the court. It is believed that he was appointed intentionally by the colonial government because he harbored a grudge against Bismil since 1916, when Bismil led Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s great procession through Lucknow.
The legal defense for the arrested revolutionaries was provided by Gobind Ballabh Pant, Mohan Lal Saxena, Chandra Bhanu Gupta, Ajit Prasad Jain, Gopi Nath Srivastava, R. M. Bahadurji, B. K. Chaudhury and Kripa Shankar Hajela. The trial began on 1st May 1926 in the Special Sessions Court of Justice Archibald Hamilton and went on for nearly 18 months. The final judgments were declared on April 6, 1927. After Ashfaqullah Khan was arrested, another trial was conducted, where he refused to provide evidence against his accomplices and was given the death sentence on 11 August 1927. Most of the accused were given prison sentences upto 14 years : Manmathnath Gupta (14 years); Raj Kumar Sinha, Vishnu Sharan Dublish, Ram Krishna Khatri and Suresh Charan Bhattacharya (10 years); Bhupendranath Sanyal, Prem Krishna Khanna, Banwari Lal and Ram Dulare Trivedi (5 years); Pranawesh Chatterjee (4 years); Ram Nath Pandey (3years). Sachindranath Sanyal, Sachindranath Bakshi, Govind Charan Kar, Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee and Mukundi Lal were deported to the Cellular Jail in Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Four men, Ram Prasad Bismil, Thakur Roshan Singh, Rajendra Nath Lahiri and Ashfaqullah Khan were given capital punishment. Chandrasekhar Azad was killed years later in an encounter with the police in February 1931.
The death sentences angered a lot of Indians who made several attempts to save the four who were sentenced. This included a petition to the British viceroy and the passage of a motion in the legislative council of the United Provinces, but they were all rejected. All of the accused were sent to different jails in the United Provinces where they staged a hunger strike, when they were refused the rights which were usually given to political prisoners. Bismil was hanged on 19 December 1927 at Gorakhpur Jail, Ashfaqulla Khan at the Faizabad Jail and Thakur Roshan Singh at Naini Allahabad Jail. Rajendra Nath Lahiri was hanged in the Gonda district jail on 17 December 1927, two days before the scheduled date. The Kakori train robbery was one of the many organized attacks and protests against the colonial government.
Though it may seem unsuccessful, it made a huge impact on the stronghold of the British government which ultimately led to the end of colonial rule. This incident was referred to as the ‘Kakori Train Robbery’ or the ‘Kakori Train Conspiracy’ but on 9th August 2021, the Uttar Pradesh government renamed it to ‘Kakori Train Action’ as a tribute to the revolutionaries and also deeming it ‘derogatory’ to refer to a freedom movement as a ‘conspiracy’.
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