Arrest, Trial
& Sentence
The colonial government did not lose this case under the ordinary law. It changed the law in order to try it.
Proceedings
Raids and arrest
Following the Central Legislative Assembly action in Delhi on 8 April, police raids uncovered HSRA bomb-making premises at Lahore, Saharanpur and Agra. A wave of arrests followed across the organisation. Sukhdev Thapar was arrested at Lahore. Sources differ on the precise day.
The approvers
Several members of the organisation turned approver — among them Jai Gopal, Hans Raj Vohra and Phonindra Nath Ghosh — and gave evidence for the prosecution in exchange for pardon. Their testimony formed the spine of the case and supplied the account of the organisation’s internal structure on which the prosecution relied.
The hunger strike begins
The prisoners struck for recognition as political prisoners rather than ordinary convicts: equal treatment with European prisoners, decent food, access to books and newspapers, and exemption from degrading labour. The strike ran for months and was reported nationally. It converted a criminal prosecution into a public political argument about the nature of colonial imprisonment.
Committal proceedings open
Proceedings began before a magistrate at Lahore. The accused used the courtroom as a platform from the outset — slogans, statements, and a refusal to accept the framing of the prosecution — and the administration began treating the trial itself as a problem of public order.
The death of Jatindra Nath Das
Das, a co-accused and bomb-maker, died on the sixty-third day of the hunger strike. His death and the funeral procession that followed produced the single most damaging episode of the trial for the colonial administration, and confirmed for a national audience that the prisoners’ claim was worth dying for.
The ordinance
The Viceroy, Lord Irwin, promulgated an ordinance constituting a Special Tribunal of three judges to try the case. The tribunal was empowered to proceed in the absence of the accused and of their counsel; the ordinary right of appeal to the High Court was removed, leaving only a petition to the Privy Council in London. The measure was made by executive act, not by legislation.
Trial before the tribunal
The tribunal as first constituted comprised Justice J. Coldstream as president with Justice Agha Haidar and Justice G. C. Hilton. It was subsequently reconstituted, with Justice Hilton presiding alongside Justice Abdul Qadir and Justice J. K. Tapp. The accused declined to participate in a proceeding constituted on these terms, and much of the trial ran in their absence — which the ordinance expressly permitted.
Judgment
The tribunal delivered a judgment running to several hundred pages. Sukhdev Thapar, Bhagat Singh and Shivaram Hari Rajguru were sentenced to death by hanging. Other accused received transportation for life or terms of imprisonment; several were acquitted. The ordinance under which the tribunal sat expired at the end of that month.
Privy Council
The appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London — the only avenue the ordinance had left open — was dismissed in February 1931. The sentences stood.
The Judgment of 7 October 1930
The principal sentences recorded in the tribunal’s judgment.
| Accused | Sentence | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Sukhdev Thapar | Death by hanging | Conspiracy; planning of the Saunders action |
| Bhagat Singh | Death by hanging | Already under sentence in the Delhi Assembly Bomb Case |
| Shivaram Hari Rajguru | Death by hanging | Arrested at Pune, 30 September 1929 |
| Kishori Lal | Transportation for life | |
| Mahavir Singh | Transportation for life | Later died in the Andaman penal settlement |
| Bejoy Kumar Sinha | Transportation for life | |
| Shiv Verma | Transportation for life | Later a principal memoirist of the group |
| Gaya Prasad | Transportation for life | |
| Jaidev Kapoor | Transportation for life | |
| Kamalnath Tiwari | Transportation for life | |
| Kundan Lal | Rigorous imprisonment | Commonly recorded as seven years |
| Prem Dutt | Rigorous imprisonment | Accounts of the term differ |
| Ajoy Ghosh | Acquitted | Later General Secretary of the Communist Party of India |
Why the Ordinance Matters
It is possible to hold two views about the guilt of the accused. It is much harder to defend the instrument by which they were tried.
An ordinary criminal trial in British India carried certain guarantees: the accused was present, was represented, could cross-examine, and could appeal to the High Court. The ordinance of 1 May 1930 removed each of these in a single stroke, for one case, by executive act, while that case was already in progress.
A tribunal that may convict a man in his absence, without his counsel, and from which no appeal lies to the ordinary courts is not a court applying the law. It is an administrative instrument wearing the form of one. The accused understood this, which is why they refused to participate: participation would have conceded that the proceeding was a trial.
The prosecution’s evidence
The case rested substantially on approvers — former members of the organisation who gave evidence in exchange for pardon. Such testimony is legally admissible and historically difficult. It comes from people with an overwhelming interest in the version they give, and it is the source of much of what is confidently stated today about the HSRA’s internal structure.
This archive treats the prosecution case as evidence of what the state alleged and could prove to its own tribunal — not as a neutral account of how the organisation worked.
- The requirement that the accused be present
- Effective representation by counsel of choice
- Appeal to the High Court of Punjab
- The ordinary procedure of a sessions trial