A post is being shared on social media with a claim that a lawyer named Asaf Ali represented Bhagat Singh in a court case. The post also claims that Satyanarayan Sharma, an RSS worker, represented the British government in the same case.
The Facebook post read as: “भगत सिंह के लिए केस लड़ने वाले वकील का नाम आसिफ अली था और भगत सिंह को फांसी दिलाने के लिए अंग्रेजो की तरफ से केस लड़ने वाले का नाम राय बहादुर सूर्य नारायण शर्मा (आरएसएस) था आज उस महान वकील आसफ़ अली का जन्मदिन है। बहुत बहुत नमन उनको.”
Here’s the link to the post.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the post, and found it to be misleading.
We ran a search and found an article on the India Law Journal website, mentioning that ‘Bhagat Singh was charged with attempt to murder under Section 307 of the Indian Penal Code. Asaf Ali, a member of the Congress Party, was his lawyer. The trial started on May 7, 1929. The Crown was represented by the public prosecutor Rai Bahadur Suryanarayan (Suraj Narain) and the trial magistrate was a British Judge, P.B Pool’.
We searched further and found that the documents of the trial were available on the website of Indian Culture ( Vol 1 & Vol 2).
In the documents, it’s mentioned on several occasions that Asaf Ali was the defence counsel for both Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt. It is also mentioned that Rai Bahadur Suraj Narain was the public prosecutor for the Crown.
We found another article in The Hindu, dated August 2011, which talked about the trial of Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt in the ‘Assembly bombing’ case, pointing out that ‘Dutt was represented by nationalist counsel Asaf Ali and Bhagat Singh fought his own case with the help of a legal adviser’.
As per the article, the trial started on 7th May and 12th June in 1929, and both Bhagat Singh and Dutt were convicted and sentenced life term.
A.G. Noorani, in his book The Trial of Bhagat Singh Politics of Justice, wrote that Asaf Ali appeared for the defence, while Rai Bahadur Suraj Narain appeared for the prosecution. The book also stated that Asaf Ali was primarily Dutt’s counsel. An excerpt from the book read: ‘Bhagat Singh had informed his father of the date of hearing in a letter he wrote, on April 26, from Delhi Central Jail. He wrote in Urdu to the members of his family and in English to some of his friends like Jai Dev Gupta. He was at pains to assure the family
that all was well. There was no need to engage a lawyer. “But I want to take legal opinion on certain ·matters, but they are not so important…“
Moreover, we did not find any mention of Satyanarayan Sharma in any of the documents.
Thus, based on the information, it is clear that the viral post is misleading.
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