Photograph of Bhagat Singh taken in 1929 - whe...

Photograph of Bhagat Singh taken in 1929 – when he was 21 years old. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

TNN | Feb 28, 2014, 02.21 AM IST

 
AHMEDABAD: Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi once again fumbled with historical facts when he said that Bhagat Singh had spent a long time incarcerated on the Andaman islands.

In fact, it was Veer Savarkar who was imprisoned in the jail on the Andamans. Bhagat Singh and his friends were lodged in jails around Delhi. After their arrest on April 8, 1929 from the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt were first imprisoned in Delhi itself. Later, they and other revolutionaries were shifted to a jail in Miawali. After a lengthy trial, Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were sentenced to death in the Lahore conspiracy case and hanged in a Lahore jail in March 1931.

Modi made the gaffe while discussing his vision of India in 2022, 75 years after Independence, at the inaugural function of e-Nagar in Gandhinagar on Wednesday. Recalling the contribution of the revolutionaries who had sacrificed their lives during the freedom struggle, Modi went on to claim that Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru had spent time in the Andaman jail.

“The mere mention of Bhagat Singh and his friends makes our hair stand on end. Why did all these people go to the gallows? Why did they spend time in Andaman-Nicobar islands? The freedom they struggled for should be glowing in its 75th year,” Modi said.

In the recent past, the Gujarat chief minister has got historical facts wrong on more than one occasion. Speaking at a function in Kheda in November last year, Modi had attacked the Congress for not bringing back the ashes of Jan Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mookherjee from Switzerland. What he actually wanted to say was the ashes of the freedom fighter Shyamaji Krishna Varma

Read more – http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Modi-sends-Bhagat-Singh-to-Andaman-jail/articleshow/31125855.cms

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