Born
27 or 28 September 1907
Banga, Jaranwala Tehsil, Lyallpur district, Punjab, British India (present-day Pakistan)

Died
23 March 1931
Lahore, Punjab, British India (present-day Pakistan)

Age
23 or 24

Organization
Naujawan Bharat Sabha
Hindustan Socialist Republican Association
Kirti Kisan Party

Movement
Indian Independence Movement

1.  Bhagat Singh left home for Kanpur when his parents tried to get him married, saying that if he married in slave India, “my bride shall only be death” and joined Hindustan Socialist Republican Association.

2.  He along with Sukhdev planned to avenge the death of Lala Lajpat Rai and plotted to kill the Superintendent of Police James Scott in Lahore. However in a case of mistaken identity, John Saunders, the Assistant Superintendent of Police was shot.

3.  Although a Sikh by birth, he shaved his beard and cut his hair to avoid being recognised and arrested for the killing. He managed to escape from Lahore to Calcutta.

4.  A year later, he and Batukeshwar Dutt threw bombs in the Central Assembly Hall in Delhi, and shouted “Inquilab Zindabad!” He did not resist his arrest at this point.

5.  During interrogation, the British came to know about his involvement of in the death of John Saunders a year earlier.

6.  At the time of his trial, he didn’t offer any defence, rather used the occasion to propagate the idea of India’s freedom.

7.  His death sentence was pronounced on 7 October 1930, which he heard with defiant courage.

8.  During his stay in jail, he went on a hunger strike against the policy of better treatment for prisoners of foreign origin.

9.  He was sentenced to be hanged on 24 March 1931, but it was brought forward by 11 hours to 23 March 1931 at 7:30 p.m.

10.  It is said that no magistrate was willing to supervise the hanging. After the original death warrants expired it was an honorary judge who signed and oversaw the hanging.

11.  Legend says, Bhagat Singh marched to the gallows with a smile on his face and his one last act of defiance was shouting "Down with British imperialism."

12.  India’s most famous freedom fighter was only 23 years old when he was hanged. His death inspired hundreds to take up the cause of the freedom movement.


13. Bhagat Singh was a great actor in college and took part in several plays. Most notable plays he was praised in were ‘Rana Pratap’, ‘Samrat Chandragupta’ and ‘Bharata-durdasha’.

14. At the age of 12, right after the Jalianwala Bagh incident, Bhagat Singh bunked school and went straight to the place of the tragedy. He collected a bottle of mud wet with blood of Indians and worship the bottle every day.

15. As a child, Bhagat Singh often talked and wanted to grow guns in the fields, so that he could fight the British.

16. At the age of 8, he talked about driving out Britishers from India and not about the games or toys.

17. At an early age he was attracted towards socialism and socialist revolutions led by Lenin Soon he started to reading about them.

18. Singh said: “They may kill me, but they cannot kill my ideas. They can crush my body, but they will not be able to crush my spirit.” This was to be quoted many times over by revolutionaries after Singh’s death.

19. The bombs Bhagat Singh and his associates threw in the Central Assembly in Delhi were made from low grade explosives. They were lobbed away from people in the corridors of the building and were meant only to startle and not harm. The British investigation into the incident and forensics report also confirmed this.

20. During his stay in prison in 1930, Bhagat Singh coined the word “political prisoner” and demanded he and his comrades be given basic amenities that even British looters and goons in the jail were entitled to.

21. He coined the phrase ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ that became the slogan of the India’s armed freedom struggle.

22. Singh was hanged an hour ahead of the official time when the death sentence was to be commuted and was secretly cremated on the banks of the river Sutlej by jail authorities. However, thousands of people on hearing the news gathered at the spot and took out a procession with his ashes.